Yoginomics

I will be on radio today.....and today I will talk about yoginomics.

YOGINOMICS = I help you, and in some unfathomable, convoluted way, long after we forget our association, I will be rewarded. If you grow and do well generally, I will benefit too from your success. This is super-macro economics, the new generation economics. I am so excited and passionate about it. This is huge, and not widely understood. But look at Wikipedia: everybody contributes anonymously and freely to the community, and everybody benefits. Scientists who studied the improbably astronomical systems like Stephen Hawking is now mainstream – in time, yoginomics will too. It’s mind-boggling. Believe it, it’s happening. I know someone who is building Ze Villages, to link together communities that are already practising this. This spiritual revolution thing I am banging on is actually bigger than one woman’s crazy ideals. It’s just that we don’t go around marketing it and promoting it like zealots.

Let me give you a personal example. When I graduated from Oxford, I lived a terrible life for a while. We could not afford to live in London, where I was working. I commuted and worked crazy hours. I was permanently exhausted and bad tempered. My kids never saw me and my personal relationship was at rock bottom. So we began shopping for a place in London, near my place of work. We looked and looked, and could not find anything. The flats were either too small, on a busy road, on the top floor with no lift or on a high floor which were a danger to small kids. To find a home for 4 young children on a very low budget was sheer impossibility.

The young estate agent showing us round was as disheartened as we were. Then one day, as we were driving around furtilely, she said, “This one just came in, it’s in your price range, not suitable for you but let’s have a look anyway, since we are in the vicinity.” It was advertised as a two bedroom flat in need of complete modernisation. How to fit 4 kids in?

But it was mis-advertised. The place we walked into was old, yes, but a sumptuous family home with three bedrooms, two bathrooms and two reception rooms. Its high ceilinged rooms were as grand as a ballroom, and it had lovely chandeliers. Our neighbour, with whom we share a courtyard, was the Sultan of Oman, no less. We sometimes see him contemplating the peaceful stone fountain outside our window.

The agency gave it to us at the advertised price. We rented it very happily for two years, renovating it and decorating it with love. And then, at the end of the two years, the owner wanted to sell up. She was a Lebanese lady who wanted to return home and was selling up to simplify her life. She gave us first right of refusal to buy the property.

Of course we couldn’t afford it. We started looking for a new home, very depressed. The owner phoned us and asked us why we were looking for a new place. Didn’t we like her flat? I told her we couldn’t afford it, not even if she dropped the price by 50% or a few hundred thousand pounds.

“What can you afford?” she asked. I was too embarrassed to tell her.

Then she just said, “Just give me what you can afford.”

NO WAY! We gave her a week to change her mind, but she came back a week later to say, “I am an old woman, I don’t need more money. This flat is very precious to me, because it was a gift from my late husband. So I often stand outside here. And I see your family, how happy you all are here. So please, it’s yours if you want it.”

Isn’t that amazing? We sold that flat when we moved out of London, and with the proceeds, we bought a historic house with its own river and island. But I still have great love for the place, and often walk the pavements of Prince Consort Road remembering one stranger’s kindness and generosity to my family. Yoginomics at work!!!