Cry of the Market

… I love markets! The energy is incomparable. You see people at their raw state. The hawkers crying out their wares, the fruit must not rot, all must go before the end of the day. The economics of the market is different from that of the boardroom. Textbook theories does not work in the market. You don’t learn about the market in the classroom, you walk the street, you live and sleep the market, imbibing the energy and learning the ropes. When I enter a new city I want to check out the vibe of the market, I learn more there than in the stuffy and pretentious departmental stores. In the market you see man at his best and at his weakest, you see spontaneity play out, the rawness of emotion. All these is well hidden, packaged and presented in appealing form in stores.

One of the things I enjoy most is the cry of the fruit seller, it is the craftman’s signature with its own unique rhythm and rhyme, hollering that his is the best, the sweetest and juicest, his neighbour to the right is doing exactly the same, crying that his is the best, and so is the neighbour to the left and every other fruit seller in the market. The buyer definitely has his job cut out, trying to figure who truly has the best, the sweetest and juiciest fruit! Every seller is shouting out in the same manner. Which one of them is telling the truth? Could it be just one, some, all or none? Have they all tasted all their fruits? Do they truly know? Or are they all as clueless as the unsuspecting buyers? Is it just market noise, street cries and survival tactics? Is it possible that the taste of the pudding is only in the eating? There are so many fruits, so many fruit sellers and so many cries, how can we possibly taste every fruit to know which is which? There are also varying taste buds and taste interpretations. The taste information is not in the cry! The cry is just attention grabbing, crowd pulling.

Truth sometimes can be like this. There are loads of ‘fruit sellers’ claiming they have the truth. Theirs is the best, the real truth, the only truth, but how do we know? Do we try out every claim of truth? Or do we settle with the first one we encounter? Or do we go with the loudest one, the one with the largest followers, the oldest one, the more convincing one, etc? Do we find the answer we seek in the ‘cry’ in the same manner we try to figure out the taste of the fruit from the claim of the fruit seller or must we take a bite first?

The truth is not always in the ‘cry’ or in the ‘claim’. The truth must be found in a deeper place. As we can not dig our teeth into every single fruit, we need a way to find out if the ‘fruit’ is truly sweet and juicy, sadly the cry of the fruit seller is not a reliable witness. We must block out the noise, the market noise and listen for the fruit sound, apply our other senses, sense of touch, smell, taste, intuition, perception, experience etc. We must attend to our experience of the encounter.

A lot can be said on this issue, but brevity demands that we lay it to rest. The summary of the matter is that we listen in our soul and reach a place of assurance, understanding that truth rest not in the cry.

Every man will proclaim his own goodness, his own righteousness, but a faithful man who can find?

The time to listen in a different way and to a different sound is upon us.