“Pois” dress

Today I went to get the dress I took to tighten. A beautiful dress! Since I looked at it I was delighted and I knew it would be mine. At that moment all my efforts and intentions not to buy what I don’t need went down the drain.

And who said I don’t need beauty, dreams, fantasy?

A woman will always be enchanted by such things. Honestly, I feel a holy envy if envy can be holy, of the vanity less women. Yes, I feel it. Of course I want the detachment, of course I don’t want to be futile nor superficial, of course I want to feed my spirit, but I also like material things, things that don’t bring happiness but fill the eyes.

Then I remembered a movie I watched a long time ago with Shirley MacLaine (I think “Out on a limb”) in which the character is in Machu Picchu for spiritual learning. And a peasant woman humbly asks for her ring. It was a jewel of affective value and the character hesitates, though she was there precisely to learn to let go the things of this world. I remembered exactly her face suffering when removing the ring from the finger. She realized how difficult was to practice the detachment.

As long as we inhabit this body which was also given to us by God, we will suffer from these conflicts. Like the poet Adelia Prado I can say:

“no sin has deserted from me”. Not yet.

Also in another poem Adelia tells of the widows who were soon wearing red ribbons in their hair and lipstick on their lips and sweeping the sidewalks and singing. That’s life, isn’t it? For now I reflect on the vanity of the world but I can’t help coveting a beautiful dress, some earrings and a pink lipstick. Nothing sophisticated, but simply beautiful.

More difficult than learning to let go all these small things is not caring if you are not loved. We easily give our honor to God, Saint Teresa would say, but if we suffer any injustice or a little rejection, there we go so sad to claim our dear honor back with God. I once read a book about purgatory souls that a princess asks a soul if she, the princess, was already spiritually fit to meet God, to which the soul replies: No, you still love to be dear!

What do you think?

I still love my dot dress!

This story was published in The Cotton Thread — weaving life with words. If you want to be a writer in our publication, click here.