Pastafarians, or those who carry a pasta strainer on their heads, believe that we all originate from pirates. They also believe that climate change takes place because the number of pirates has gone down, and they even have statistics to prove this. 

As I was feeling the full sweetness of my world in my rocking chair this morning, I realized the pastafarians were both right and wrong, just like people in general. They believe we used to be pirates, but actually we are still pirates, and that is why everything is messed up and we are about to destroy our whole planet, and surely ourselves at the same time.

Let me explain! Each of us behaves like a pirate in our relationship with each other and with this wonderfully beautiful and still alive world around us. We are bandits of lack because we first imagine ourselves to be destitute and then we imagine that other man or his ship is carrying the riches we lack. It does not matter what we miss, or what we feel we the lack of – money, security, or love – but in any case, we imagine we’ll get it from someone else, by robbing him or her ship, or otherwise exploiting them.

That is why we entice each other, or throw our emotional anchors towards people who fascinate or scare us. Towards that wonderfully beautiful woman who could give me the love I lack, the lap that would finally complete me. Or towards that handsome man who should do that for me. Only after we have anchored ourselves to someone do we feel safe, as we once long ago felt in our mother’s arms, where those emotional anchors were at their strongest.

We also hate each other with enthusiasm, and often our love anchors get rusty and become anchors of anger and fear. That’s how our emotional ties remain strong, we’re still anchored to another person, only the sign of our emotion has changed from plus to minus, which is ultimately the same, because for many, the most important thing is to be anchored to another, or to be safe.

By hating or loving those “divine” public figures, or by anchoring to them, we also gain similar experiences. They are like substitutes for our missing or deficient near relationships in which we don’t feel safe enough. And those divine figures receive our power and authority, for by raising them up we also humble ourselves. But we are at anchor, or connected and thus supposedly safe!

The same sense of anchoring, exploitation and looting governs all our work and business life, the whole human relationship to this wonderful living Earth and the still relatively diverse layer of Life enveloping it. Let’s use everyone and everything to our own advantage, because I need to get what I lack. But does anyone know what we were really missing, for there is no booty big enough for the pirates of our world, neither for you nor for me!

As I sat in my rocking chair, I realized that as long as I have any anchors of longing thrown at other people and their ships, I will be a prisoner of my lack and at the same time a slave to those others. They have what I lack, and that’s why they can control me. And it is all the same whether they have wealth, love or wisdom, that I feel to be missing, in any case, I will be their captive, their galley slave.

By identifying all the anchors that I have used to tie myself to those other pirates, I can pull them back one by one into my own vessel of life to restore my previously scattered power, and my ability to steer my own life, which I had lost for a while by anchoring onto those other destitute pirates like me. By being haphazardly anchored to each other in so many ways, we the needy have ones have formed a huge unsteerable flotilla of vessels big and small, which is drifting helplessly from one catastrophe to another and approaching the edge of the world we all are so afraid of…

I have recently identified and removed many of my emotional anchors: to someone so utterly wonderful and wise, to another who threatened me horribly, to someone who wanted to lead me and to a person who triggered my angriest irritation. And naturally also to both Bill Gates, Donald Trump, Margaret Thatcher and the Finnish prime minister Sanna Marin.

When I am no longer addicted or anchored to anyone else, I find that I can love and rejoice with everything and everyone I encounter. Everything is seen and felt in love, both the lovely people I meet and the gravel under my shoes, the delightful flowers as well as the dead leaves by the roadside, and my adorable cats as well as the clouds in the dark sky. Everything is love, and joy arising from it, when I am no longer missing anything, that is, when I no longer imagine myself as a somehow needy slave or pirate. Just try it!