No Company Cheese!

Here is an excerpt from my book, Altar your Space. This story has quickly developed into one of the favorite metaphors in the book. I have shortened it a bit and the book offers a fuller explanation but you will still enjoy this.

Did you ever see an unhappy horse? Did you ever see bird that had the blues? One reason why birds and horses are not unhappy is because they are not trying to impress other birds and horses.
— Dale Carnegie

In the same way that our attitudes and intentions can invoke the sacred, they can also banish the sacred by provoking tension, restlessness and discomfort. Our attitudes and priorities around the things in our homes, relative to the people who live there or come to visit, affect those people and our home environments.
Last year I went to a shop in Beverly Hills to buy some quality cheese. It was a reminder gift to my wife of our beautiful trip to Paris the previous Christmas. Many of the terrific meals we had eaten in the Parisian restaurants had involved delicious cheese. I bought a large wedge of very fine white truffle cheese, took it home and put it in the fridge. The next day I took it out, intending to sample it.
“Hey Jagatjoti,” my wife said, “should we save the cheese for company tonight?”
“Oh, this is company cheese?” I joked. “So we only get house cheese? I want company cheese!”
“I want company cheese too!” said my almost–three-year-old daughter. But she was completely serious. Soon she and I were chanting together, “We want company cheese! We want company cheese!”
Of course my wife appreciated my silly humor, and we all ended up eating company cheese. Company cheese is now a family joke. But it points to a real principle about how to live, and not live, in our own homes. The principle is this: first and foremost, home should serve the people who live there. But sometimes we set up a home environment for the benefit of others, at the expense of those who live in it. This is a company-cheese mentality. It creates tension and discomfort, and makes people (usually the children) second-class citizens in their own homes.