She called me at 4 a.m. in tears and babbling on that her new sofa had just been delivered and was 1” too long.
What?
In between her sobs and shrieks of “what am I going to do?” I finally figured out the gorgeous new sofa she had waited for weeks to be delivered was about to annihilate her carefully engineered Feng Shui.
Longtime friend, Cassie, who lives in London, tends to be a bit emotional when things don’t go as planned. She morphed into a Feng Shui fruitcake after meeting an alleged guru on the subject a few years ago.
So enamoured is she of the power of Feng Shui that when she moved into her new home recently, she called in a ‘master’ of Feng Shui at the ridiculous price of 900 Euros (about $1K) to make it her very special place of harmony and balance.
According to Cassie, creating harmony and balance in her home will ensure her emotional wellbeing and all those that live and visit there. Her ‘master’ of Feng Shui says ‘it’s vital when moving into a new home’ as he persuaded her that a dab of red here, a mirror there and some nice crystals over there will enhance her health, wealth and happiness.
Poor Cassie’s haven of harmony and balance has just been blown to smithereens though because the new sofa was a mere one inch too long.
“What a load of phooey,” I said, making her cry even harder. “It’s not that I don’t believe in Feng Shui, I just don’t think the placement of a sofa of a precise size in a particular spot is going to change my fortune or life.
“You’re so full of Yin,” screamed Cassie down the phone. “You’re so negative,” she said.
According to the yin and yang theory (I looked it up), “everything in the universe consists of positive and negative opposing, but interconnected, qualities: Yin, which is feminine, and yang, which is masculine. Yin qualities are female, soft, passive, nurturing, dark, while the yang qualities are male, hard, active, aggressive, bright.”
Apparently, this is how a Feng Shui ‘master’ balances your interior surroundings.
Feng Shui, which translates as wind and water, started in China thousands of years ago, and it was the inspiration for the design of temples and graveyards.
Today, it’s become trendy and synonymous with architecture working in harmony with nature and the earth in general. It’s based on the belief that there is a continuous flow of energy between humans and their physical surroundings.
According to Cassie, I am in desperate need of some Feng Shui, especially in the love quadrant.
What?
“You live too far away for my Feng Shui guy,” she said, “but I’m sending you a gift voucher for a practitioner in Tampa to prepare a Bagua Map for you.”
What the blazes is a bagua map?
Apparently, it’s an octagonal shape map made up of sections that correspond to the nine important areas of our personal lives.
The ‘practitioner’ draws a floor plan of your home and then places the Bagua Map over the floor plan to locate the energy fields in the home.
Then, according to what you want to achieve, like better health, a vibrant love life, or just an overall feeling of harmony in your home, the Feng Shui expert will advise on decorating colors, curtains, furniture placement, light source, and so on.
At a cost, of course.
Oooops. Here comes another bad energy field just thinking about it.
