Inside, this cube is white, completely blank. I sit curled up in there, alone with myself. The cube, along with the sphere, is a special form. Where the sphere relates to perfection, the cube relates to the sacred. Wheat is a product of the work on the land, also the stuff of nourishment, physical and spiritual. Water is the very medium that bore life and is still the most vital of all elements. Without water there is no life - my apologies to the organisms that thrive in sulphuric acid environments. As I look at a yellow sky and the already blackened tracery of winter branches, a reminder of winter approaching, snow flurries already here - I wonder where the fundamental work that we do to launch our future generations into their own future is leading us. I don't want the cloying mawkish sentimentality of returning to the past as an idyllic time, frozen and in fact imaginary in its perfection. I look to assess the balance between going forward confidently and leaving behind what is fundamental and precious int he long term. Surely we don't have to lose the sense of honour and right to be modern? Surely, it is possible to be fallible and imperfect, and yet to have an anchor of probity and a moral compass? I don't know whether there is really a loss of moral code or a loss of community - the press has too much to say about all this - but I know there is a terrific dilution for the young of the message that guides them in judging the future; there is so much glamour in having goods, in looking sexy, in putting me first, while the rewards of giving and being are perhaps not as widely advertised as they might be. So what am I trying to say? I want to express not nostalgia but a robust call to reality: what is fundamental? Asking questions like "What is just adornment and what is truly fundamental?" "What is happiness made of and what is illusion fabricated from?" I am talking to you - yes you! - and me: wake up and sort our your messy drawers! I was talking to a youngster recently and suggested volunteering. I could see that volunteering is seen as an old person's game. If you are no longer good for anything else... and besides, why should I work for nothing? Curiously, I believe that volunteers are the best paid people in the land and liberty is not a small part of that. Going round and round in circles, being confused about what is right and good and best for me, forgetting the value of pure water and wholesome grain, neglecting the quiet inner space - I find all that in others of all ages and, to be quite honest, I often find it in myself.
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