Today I was thinking about how societal shifts have changed the things we value. There are a lot of jokes online about using toilet paper as a form of currency. This is not the first time that something unexpected has become quite valuable. In the Middle Ages, onions were such an important food that people would pay for their rent with onions and even give them as gifts.
And there is an old tale of a shipwrecked man who washed up on a beach covered with diamonds, which are worthless in that country. All he has with him is a bag of onions, which are highly unknown, and therefore highly valuable there. He is rewarded for the onions with a shipload of diamonds. When his brothers go back there with garlic, hoping for more diamonds, they are rewarded with the most valuable thing in the country, a bag of onions!
I am constantly delighted by the way everything in the universe seems to be connected, so I was not really surprised when I happened upon a blog titled, "The Universe As An Onion," which discusses the symbolism of this edible bulb. The blog author notices that when one cuts an onion from top to bottom, the center is similar in appearance to that of an eye. She also mentions the practice of placing onions over the eye sockets of the deceased so they could see into the next world. This seems somehow ironic when one considers the eye irritation that can occur when cutting up onions. I also read that the smell of onion is the most effective thing for relieving stinging eyes irritated by tear gas!
These onion thoughts may seem silly. But one never knows where one's mind will go once it begins a journey. Paul Cezanne said, "If isolation tempers the strong, it is the stumbling block of the uncertain." I am a little more certain at the end of this blog than I was at the beginning. That boost of certainty probably won't last long though. That is why I try to work on my blog a little each day. It is a way to pick myself up and dust myself off. I find that the ups and downs are less extreme if I keep moving. And if that doesn't help, I consider the following words of advice:
In these tumultuous times it is not unusual for us to experience rapidly changing emotions. Kurt Vonnegut says, "Laughter and tears are both responses to frustration and exhaustion. I myself prefer to laugh, since there is less cleaning up to do afterward."
I will close today with this cartoon from Nathan Pyle: