Too much is never enough...

It would seem that greed has become the bane of my existence. I’m fundamentally disconnected from whatever impulse it is that perpetually drives the inability for people to be happy with what they have. The desire for more just doesn’t resonate with me. I don’t “want” anything. I’d like more money but only so I can get out of debt and not so I can move to a big house or make my car into some gaudy flashy abomination, or even to trick out my wardrobe into some obscene pastiche of color and designer labels. I don’t need it. My great aunt used to impress upon me the difference between wants and needs. She endlessly sought to instill in me that there were things worth saving for such as car repairs, emergency medical services, etc. and then there were wants that could and should be relegated to a back seat position and regarded only when the disposable income was available.

I find myself in the unique position currently where everyone around me is speaking of and placing importance around the idea of planning for some idealized career situation in which they have total autonomy and want for nothing. One friend in particular made a proclamation some years ago in which he stated his intention to be a millionaire by the time he was thirty. With only a couple of years left before his deadline arrives, he had indicated that he’s on track to fulfilling this goal. Now given that I generally get by on a shoe string budget and still manage to have enough spare cash to help out those in need, the question for me is why anyone would need this much money? It serves no real purpose, it doesn’t enrich life in any real way and it doesn’t contribute to the content of one’s character. It’s ones and zeroes that are given arbitrary value and allow for the exchange of goods or services that are ostensibly of a quality that will somehow elevate the purchaser to a station or position of betterment and recognition. I listen to the rhetoric as it’s espoused, and I can’t help but feel indifferent or disgusted at the importance placed on money.

Given that I’m not too far from turning thirty, myself, I listen to all of these lofty ideas, intentions of taking off and going to Paris or some other exotic location to relax and indulge, and I can’t help but see it all as useless excess. It seems that everyone these days wants to travel, they want to see the world and take in what they believe to be some grand experience. Now I can’t and won’t decry travel or exploration. I’ve never left the country, I’ve never wanted to. That’s not to suggest that I’m some die hard, overly patriotic idiot that clings to the stars and bars as though they are the only true herald of prosperity and truth in the world, rather I recognize that on the whole, my interest in visiting another part of the globe would be unfulfilled given that my interests aren’t for sightseeing or taking copious photos of some landmark or work of art, rather I seek to understand the place. I would only go to one place in the world and it’s because of the history. And I wouldn’t visit, I’d go and never return. But the common refrain these days from most everyone in my age demographic seems to center on saving for the future because of the myth that Social Security won’t be around when it finally comes time to collect and that the greatest accomplishment one person can achieve in their career aspirations is to become their own boss. Now regardless of the goal, ultimately it seems to all come back to greed. This incessant need to just need more, to never accept enough as being sufficient is sick.

Now I know that human beings are hard wired to strive for more, to work toward achieving higher aims; it’s how we cultivated culture, language, and produced civilization, but the things we work toward in this society seems to just be material. A bigger bank account, a nice suit, flashier clothes, a nicer car, a bigger house, a pet with a pedigree, a job with a multi word and multi syllable title that comes with a corner office and company expense account, and all of this is nice in theory but we define ourselves by it. We actively believe that attaining these material or arbitrary items and titles respectively will somehow enrich us as people. No one takes the time to realize that even with a bank account that sports a seven figure balance, a house that has taxes equating to more than I pay in rent for the year, or a job title that can’t be translated into the native language of the country where you multinational corporation is pillaging and raping the land, you’re not made a better person. You’re still you. Nothing changed. Greed has become the only reason to do anything anymore. The same tiresome refrain is repeated today to kids just like it was told to me. Go to school and get good grades so you can go to a good school and in turn get a good job. Why do you need this “good job”? So that you can make obscene amounts of money and in turn live a life of luxury. The equation seems a bit lopsided to me. I work myself to the extreme of fatigue and exhaustion; I relegate myself to the bottom of the list in terms of priorities and put everyone and everything else higher up. I don’t intend to ever retire or shuffle quietly into a state of idleness and uselessness. Leisure is great, insofar as you’re doing something to enrich yourself, to better your character, cultivate your mind, or produce something useful that will benefit the whole of mankind. Instead everything has a price tag. Video games, spas, cars, movies, music, television, posters, trendy books, comics, even the simple act of having a meal has some connotation of privilege and prestige to go along with it. No one creates art for the sake of making something beautiful, they want money for it. It’s all about compensation.

I find myself at odds on the mindset of achieving a station in life where it’s acceptable to do nothing. We are the only species on the planet that seems to actually buy into the belief that there’s an imaginary quota to be filled before it’s socially acceptable to sit around and let time pass us by. Every moment of every day should be spent doing something that betters us as people. I’m a writer, or I like to dilute myself into believing I am, and while I will indulge in movies, I listen to music constantly, and on occasion I’ll read for pure enjoyment. What you don’t know if all of this is speaking to me, it’s enlightening me, it’s informing me on some small aspect of something. I’m cultivating an idea, a message, a missive, a meaning, an understanding, or reaching for an epiphany from all of this. It’s not just filling time, and that seems to be the aim for most everyone. Fill time now by working and making money so you can fill time later doing nothing of any importance to contribute or benefit the masses or yourself in any lasting way. Why does anyone need so much money that they can buy land or personal aircraft? They don’t need it, they want it. But their wants have become something to be impressed upon the masses as things that everyone should aspire to obtain. I don’t like flying to begin with, so the last thing I want is a private plane. I really only work so I can pay my bills cover my expenses. I’m not saving up for a big house, a new car, some expensive elective surgery, or even to go travel to some far flung corner of the globe. Money changes people, and the pursuit of money changes people even more. I will keep working until the day I die. And if there comes a day where I’m told that I am no longer able to work or perform the things that I find fulfillment in, that will be the day that I make my grand exit from this plane. Idleness is uselessness. I dislike the feeling of sitting around with nothing to do. If I’m ever sitting and staring blankly into the expanse of the world, I assure you, I’m not just counting passing seconds, I’m most likely working or fabricating some facet of a story I’m working on, analyzing an interaction I’ve had with someone else and the conversation that took place (questioning their word choice,  tone, inflection, timing, pacing, behavior, the focus of their eyes), or examining the nuances of some situation that I’m seeking to get more control of. There are no idle moments for me. Every second is spent doing something and it’s not for the pursuit of money or more “things”.

My car is falling from together, my apartment is in a house that is rotting away on the foundation, my job has little to no room for advancement and betterment in my career and I devote far too much of myself to it for what pittance I actually get from it, but none of this matters. I’m fulfilled. I earn enough to survive, the car keeps moving under its own power, and the house remains standing. I don’t need any of the frills and accessories that we’re told to want. I’m utilitarian to a fault, if it has no purpose, I don’t want it. It has to do something, to better my existence in some way. If it can’t, I don’t want it and I’m not interested. Now while I know the point might seem murky in all of this, let me succinctly phrase it here: why is it so hard for people to just appreciate what they have?

I know there are those that will say I’m guilty of this sin, and I won’t deny it, but I don’t seek to obtain more useless crap in an effort to find contentment. I need fulfillment on a philosophical level more than anything else. Perhaps I’m disconnected because I recognize that none of this matters. In a few billions years all of our money will mean nothing, all of our companies, our civilizations, our petty squabbles over land and beliefs, all of it will mean nothing because the little rock we inhabit will be nothing. In the grand scheme none of it means anything. So why can’t we just try our best to revel in and appreciate the things we do have while we have them? Greed drives us further from fulfillment because we always believe we need more, nothing is ever enough and never will be. I’ll keep showing up to my job until I die on the clock or they fire me because I can’t do it anymore. And if the latter happens, it’ll be on that day that I’ll know I’m no longer of use on this little rock and take my leave. I have to remain busy, to be useful, to better the subjective experience of reality we all share instead of just trying to accumulate useless and intrinsically worthless crap for the sake of saying that I managed to get more than someone else. We’re all born into the world the same way, naked, covered in slime, and screaming our heads off. We all go out of it, none of us is above death or able to cheat it (except perhaps my father, that man is harder than a coffin nail), so why should any one person have claim or need of more pieces of paper assigned an arbitrary value than anyone else? Kate Beckinsale, Keira Knightley, Channing Tatum, George Clooney, even the stuffed shirts in congress all have the same thing in common. They’re human beings, brought into existence on the same little blue orb and breathing the same air. Sure they look different and have more money, bigger houses, nicer cars, and whatever what have you, but they’re no better than me or you. They still bleed the same, they will all die in due course, and once humanity has ceased to endure, they will be forgotten. Enjoy life and what you make of it, you don’t need more, you just need enough. 

A Taste of Something Sweeter...

Why is love so complicated? We aspire to it, we covet it, we’re told it’s the ultimate and the pinnacle of human achievement in terms of finding happiness and fulfillment, yet we complicate and taint it in so many ways. If not for the fact that sex feels so damn good and the act itself is not tied directly to the emotional feelings of people having it, the human race would no doubt have died out long ago, or would rapidly be going extinct. We search for weeks, months, sometimes years to find someone that we can devote ourselves to and too often we wind up settling for the first person we can stand to be in the same room with for more than five minutes without being compelled into projectile vomiting or wanting to strangle them to within an inch of their lives. So much pressure, even just telling someone you love them, the connotation has been built up into something to heavy and almost burdensome and the words seem to hold the weight and gravity of collapsing stars. The first time you find the courage to say them to your significant other, it’s as much an expression of your emotional state as it is a more heavily veiled hope for validation that what you think you’re feeling is something real. We’ve diluted ourselves to the point that we no longer know what love really feels like, we never commit or connect in any meaningful way and the best we can muster in most cases is a willingness to forego personal ego in favor of showing a sliver of vulnerability.

I know firsthand how terrifying it is to be genuinely naked in front of someone that you hope will not betray your trust or take for granted the risk you’ve taken in opening up that much. It’s almost crippling in the amount of fear and trepidation that it engenders. For most, finding someone that will penetrate the walls, sneak past the guards, and infiltrate our defenses into the deepest recesses of our true being, a place even most of us are too scared to tread, is little more than a pipedream and all the same as much a debilitating prospect as it is something we hope for with fervent intensity. We want to find that person, to be able to shed the armor we wear even when clothes do not adorn our shoulders, and yet for all that want, we can’t give blind trust. The compromise usually ends up with us doing our best to devote ourselves in a way that eventually will build love. The old idea of two people seeing each other across a crowded room and experiencing instant attraction to something more than the physical attributes of each other, our society regards it as cynical romanticism and nothing more than a fairy tale. We’ve complicated it far more than it needs to be. But fear can be as powerful as love, in some cases even more so because of the things it takes from us. It can knock our knees right out from under us and leave us wondering what the hell happened. We wind up spending more time trying to figure out how it all fits together and actively seeking blind ignorance to the disparity, willing and wishing away the gap. Love is scary, I won’t argue it. I chose fear more than once; hell I chose addiction and called it love. I’m far from being the poster child for a healthy relationship or even the high water mark for what a romantic should be. Too often I throw all of myself into a dynamic and hope that when my head comes back up for air, she’s still there smiling. Sadly I’ve wound up floundering and almost drowning a few times too many, but at least I got my feet wet.

We don’t pine anymore, we don’t long for someone with genuine intensity; feeling that they complete us. Falling in love is something that happens against our will, and for me it’s usually most intense when I’ve tried to fight or ignore the impulse. But I’ve thought about it extensively of late, having reached a point where I’m no longer protected from my own safeguards, and recently having had a massive break through following a bombshell realization and a night that bordered on pure insanity, I’ve reached a massive epiphany. For all the bluster and blunder we ascribe to it, love is a very simple thing. Perhaps the most beautiful and simplistic description I’ve found reads: Love is composed of a single soul inhaviting two bodies. Aristotle is the quoted speaker of that little nugget and despite its being almost twenty-five hundred years old, I feel it’s as true now as it would have been the day he said it. It’s equality and recognition, respect and trust, vulnerability and openness. Love is letting it all hang out because the person you’re with is you. They’re your reflection, your ideal self, the better part of you that you never knew was missing. It’s no more complicated than that. You don’t need a reason to love someone, you just let yourself do it. For those that have someone to hold close, to call their own, someone waiting at home for them with a smile and warm gesture, treasure them above all else, and don’t just go through the motions, commit yourself every day to a better tomorrow. Finding someone that tolerates you is easy, finding someone that will make you a better person in spite of yourself, now that’s the real trick. There may not be someone out there for everyone, I’m still convinced I’m dying alone but I’m okay with that. But those that have managed to find someone that touches them in a way that defies words and goes beyond physical or emotional and to a level that boggles the mind and still leaves the stomach leaping when they walk into the room, know the value of what you have, and never take it for granted.