Sunday, February 27, 2011
On the Quantity of Life
The other day I was out eating fast food and I started to think about the sheer numbers that are involved when we consume. I was thinking about how many potatoes have to be grown so that a place like McDonald's has enough to supply fries at all their locations for just a single day. That's just one food chain. There are hundreds of other companies that use potatoes in the same way. Think of all the chickens that have to be slaughtered so that we have that delicious meat whenever we want it. It's almost hard to imagine just how much we're talking about because we've gotten to a point where if you want something all you have to do is go get it. Food is a phone call away. The thing is though that it's not just food that we devour in large quantities. Try and count the number of trees that must be cut down each day so that we can have buildings and furniture. Now don't get me wrong, I'm not saying that we shouldn't use them because let's face it, we're on this planet and have as much right as any other species to make our way through the world. There are over 6.5 billion people on this planet, with over 300 million in the US alone. It's staggering the resources that we have to go through on any given day.
Our nation has been fairly fortunate throughout its history that we don't have a lot of experience with a lack of resources. Sure there were times when people were out of work or food wasn't as plentiful as it was in the past, but our continent has an abundance of natural resources and so far we've been able to recover given enough time. Looking back to the 1930s we could see what things could be like if something broke down. The dust bowl was something that happened over a relatively small period of time in a relatively small area. Sure it was almost a decade and a hundred million acres of land, but considering the size of this nation, it actually was somewhat small in scope. Still that "small" patch of land had a ripple effect on the surrounding areas for decades after the initial problem. Even with that time where many were fighting for their survival, there were many who were more than fine. And the same is true today, sometimes even more so. How can it be that our nation is faced with a rising crisis of obesity and yet there are people who go without? It's strange that we can have people essentially dying from having to much while down the road we have people dying from not having enough.
It's very likely that no matter where you live, there are those that are homeless. Your interaction with them may be limited and in some cases you may not even know they exist. Most of us go along with our own lives and pass right on by them without a second thought. It's almost become expected that somewhere someone is going to be without. I've often wondered what the circumstances were that caused various people to live on the fringes of society. While they may get help from shelters or other organizations, there is the question of if they can ever fully recover and rejoin "civilized" society.
First off, our society is built in a way that's very precarious. It wouldn't take much for things to topple over in a way that could be nearly impossible to recover from. Three missed meals is usually enough to break down any semblance of order pretty quickly. If the lights went out or the food stopped moving it wouldn't take very long for society as we know it to drastically shift its nature. Everything we have can easily be taken away from us. Hopefully though it's not something that we're forced to experience and because we've lived in a relatively good period it's easy to take a lot of things for granted. Sure the economy isn't great, but it's nothing compared to what this country faced in the Great Depression or what other countries experience every day. Now don't get me wrong, some people have had it much worse in recent years and for them the recession we're in may as well be called a depression because as far as they're concerned it is. Still, as a whole, the country is in recovery and there seems to be a faint glimmer of light at the end of the tunnel. I think in a lot of cases there are two main schools of thought for situations like this. Either things will get better after time because they always have in the past. The other is that even if things get better in the short term, we're due for a lasting era of depression. It's only a matter of time. I guess I can see both ideas having merit because most things are cyclical given a long enough timeline.
For the individual though it may only take something in the short term to shatter their hold on society. A lost job, an illness, a death, or significant loss of money are all things that can cause people to enter into a downward spiral from which they can't recover. If you're really fortunate you have a network of friends and family that can help support you in the event that something drastic and life-altering comes along. Some people either have no one or choose not to use them and end up in a free fall. For them their resource options are gone and they experience what it is to really have to survive. In a strange way I think that's why post-apocalyptic stories are so popular. It presents us with a time where things aren't certain. Most people are able to know where their next meal is coming from. There are any number of things we take for granted that will be there. Those stories show us a potential future where life returns to how it may have been a long time ago when something as simple as finding a drink of water was something to be concerned with.
There is an assumption that everything will last for as long as we need it. It could be that there will be a time when things simply run out. Will we be prepared for something like that happening? I find myself thinking about how things we believe to be important would become frivolous in that situation. I love movies and video games, but those are products of a wealthy society. Celebrities are showered with attention and money because we choose to pay attention to them. We decide to pay ticket prices for sporting events, driving up the salaries of the athletes. It's a strange world we live in where someone who puts on makeup and plays make-believe or hits a ball with a stick is paid in six figure salaries, while those who are responsible for teaching our children are sometimes forced to take a second job just so they can pay for food in the summer. In a way it's a sign of how well our society is doing. There wouldn't be a lot of need for a movie producer or football player in a society that could barely feed itself.
Although it brings up the question of if our society is doing so well then shouldn't we be on the cusp of something greater? How long can we plod along watching television and spending our money on shiny new toys before we start looking at moving beyond the material world? Now I know these things come in small increments, but it feels like we're due for advances beyond that of how to bring 3D to our living rooms. Everything in this world uses something else for fuel. Basically everything uses something else in order to take that next step forward. It's just how things have to be. What would life be like though if we didn't need to eat? What if there was some way to break out of the old consumption paradigm in such a way that we would be free of it forever? What could we accomplish if we weren't held down by something as simple as what we're going to eat next? Maybe the next step in evolution and technology could answer those questions and the limits that are in front of us would disappear.
Our nation has been fairly fortunate throughout its history that we don't have a lot of experience with a lack of resources. Sure there were times when people were out of work or food wasn't as plentiful as it was in the past, but our continent has an abundance of natural resources and so far we've been able to recover given enough time. Looking back to the 1930s we could see what things could be like if something broke down. The dust bowl was something that happened over a relatively small period of time in a relatively small area. Sure it was almost a decade and a hundred million acres of land, but considering the size of this nation, it actually was somewhat small in scope. Still that "small" patch of land had a ripple effect on the surrounding areas for decades after the initial problem. Even with that time where many were fighting for their survival, there were many who were more than fine. And the same is true today, sometimes even more so. How can it be that our nation is faced with a rising crisis of obesity and yet there are people who go without? It's strange that we can have people essentially dying from having to much while down the road we have people dying from not having enough.
It's very likely that no matter where you live, there are those that are homeless. Your interaction with them may be limited and in some cases you may not even know they exist. Most of us go along with our own lives and pass right on by them without a second thought. It's almost become expected that somewhere someone is going to be without. I've often wondered what the circumstances were that caused various people to live on the fringes of society. While they may get help from shelters or other organizations, there is the question of if they can ever fully recover and rejoin "civilized" society.
First off, our society is built in a way that's very precarious. It wouldn't take much for things to topple over in a way that could be nearly impossible to recover from. Three missed meals is usually enough to break down any semblance of order pretty quickly. If the lights went out or the food stopped moving it wouldn't take very long for society as we know it to drastically shift its nature. Everything we have can easily be taken away from us. Hopefully though it's not something that we're forced to experience and because we've lived in a relatively good period it's easy to take a lot of things for granted. Sure the economy isn't great, but it's nothing compared to what this country faced in the Great Depression or what other countries experience every day. Now don't get me wrong, some people have had it much worse in recent years and for them the recession we're in may as well be called a depression because as far as they're concerned it is. Still, as a whole, the country is in recovery and there seems to be a faint glimmer of light at the end of the tunnel. I think in a lot of cases there are two main schools of thought for situations like this. Either things will get better after time because they always have in the past. The other is that even if things get better in the short term, we're due for a lasting era of depression. It's only a matter of time. I guess I can see both ideas having merit because most things are cyclical given a long enough timeline.
For the individual though it may only take something in the short term to shatter their hold on society. A lost job, an illness, a death, or significant loss of money are all things that can cause people to enter into a downward spiral from which they can't recover. If you're really fortunate you have a network of friends and family that can help support you in the event that something drastic and life-altering comes along. Some people either have no one or choose not to use them and end up in a free fall. For them their resource options are gone and they experience what it is to really have to survive. In a strange way I think that's why post-apocalyptic stories are so popular. It presents us with a time where things aren't certain. Most people are able to know where their next meal is coming from. There are any number of things we take for granted that will be there. Those stories show us a potential future where life returns to how it may have been a long time ago when something as simple as finding a drink of water was something to be concerned with.
There is an assumption that everything will last for as long as we need it. It could be that there will be a time when things simply run out. Will we be prepared for something like that happening? I find myself thinking about how things we believe to be important would become frivolous in that situation. I love movies and video games, but those are products of a wealthy society. Celebrities are showered with attention and money because we choose to pay attention to them. We decide to pay ticket prices for sporting events, driving up the salaries of the athletes. It's a strange world we live in where someone who puts on makeup and plays make-believe or hits a ball with a stick is paid in six figure salaries, while those who are responsible for teaching our children are sometimes forced to take a second job just so they can pay for food in the summer. In a way it's a sign of how well our society is doing. There wouldn't be a lot of need for a movie producer or football player in a society that could barely feed itself.
Although it brings up the question of if our society is doing so well then shouldn't we be on the cusp of something greater? How long can we plod along watching television and spending our money on shiny new toys before we start looking at moving beyond the material world? Now I know these things come in small increments, but it feels like we're due for advances beyond that of how to bring 3D to our living rooms. Everything in this world uses something else for fuel. Basically everything uses something else in order to take that next step forward. It's just how things have to be. What would life be like though if we didn't need to eat? What if there was some way to break out of the old consumption paradigm in such a way that we would be free of it forever? What could we accomplish if we weren't held down by something as simple as what we're going to eat next? Maybe the next step in evolution and technology could answer those questions and the limits that are in front of us would disappear.
Saturday, February 19, 2011
On Starting Over
Everything in life had to start somewhere. No matter how comfortable something is, there was a time when it was new. When it was being attempted for the first time. After a time what was new becomes the norm. It's at that point that we are given a chance to stay with that which is already established or try for something else.
It's as though life is a series of stops and starts. If you're lucky life will limit the number of times you have to start over, but it seems to be the nature of living that we return to the beginning over and over. When I was eighteen I felt like I had finally made it to a point where I had a handle on things. I had good friends. I was in a relationship. The nuances of the town I lived in were so familiar that they had become comfortable. In a way I felt like I had arrived. Like I had finally got to my intended destination. This was after years of feeling awkward and somewhat out of place so it was kind of nice to be a point in my life where things felt right. The problem with that time though was that it was limited. I was at the end of childhood and moving on towards becoming an adult. There would only be a brief window where I would feel like that because after graduation it would be time to make decisions on what to do next. Now in those situations there are really two choices. I could have stayed and enjoyed the fact that I had everything I thought I wanted. There's no saying how long it would have lasted, but eventually it would have ended. The other choice was the more painful one. Give it all up for a chance to move onto bigger things. I can't fault people for either choice because each person is different and needs different things. For me though I knew that as much as I wanted to stay that I couldn't. Staying would have meant that I'd give up my chance for something more.
I used to think that life behaved almost like a checklist of achievements. Once you accomplished something then you didn't have to worry about it ever again. No matter what else happened in your life that particular item was checked off. In the years since leaving home and going out on my own I've learned that very few things in life last for any length of time. Since all things end given enough time that means eventually everything has to start brand new at some point. Often these moments come to us when we're already very comfortable in our existing lives. It would be easy to remain fixed and unchanging, but in doing so we limit ourselves to what's beyond right now. I'm not saying that we toss overboard the things in our life that we've established. It's more that we're presented with choices to stick with what we have or go for what comes next. Sometimes it's not even a choice, it's forced on us in a way that our only option is to pick up what's left and move on. Eight months after I graduated from college I was laid off from my first job as a professional. It wasn't something I was expecting considering I had gone to school in order to become marketable and needed in the workforce. It didn't matter what I had prepared for though because I was forced to start over after only being out in the world for a short time. Not long after that I decided to start over again, but this time on my own terms because I knew there were worse things than having to start again.
It's a strange thing to give up what you know for the hope of something better. I know for a lot of people they prefer to stick with the devil they know rather than take a chance on something unknown. I can't really blame them because even in a situation where you're not happy, you at least know what to expect and that brings its own form of comfort. I've found that everything in life has a cost associated with it. Sometimes you have to give up one thing in order to get another. That's just the cost of doing business. Now it's not always true that you're forced to pick between two things, but in a lot of situations we aren't able to have everything, which means something has to take priority. You want your freedom, then you may have to give up everything that's holding you back from being free. You want money, then you may have to spend your free time to get it. You want to be in a place that feels like home, then you have to leave the place that you call home to go find it. All of those situations present us with a choice and we have to decide if we're willing to pay the price associated with what we want.
It's as though life is a series of stops and starts. If you're lucky life will limit the number of times you have to start over, but it seems to be the nature of living that we return to the beginning over and over. When I was eighteen I felt like I had finally made it to a point where I had a handle on things. I had good friends. I was in a relationship. The nuances of the town I lived in were so familiar that they had become comfortable. In a way I felt like I had arrived. Like I had finally got to my intended destination. This was after years of feeling awkward and somewhat out of place so it was kind of nice to be a point in my life where things felt right. The problem with that time though was that it was limited. I was at the end of childhood and moving on towards becoming an adult. There would only be a brief window where I would feel like that because after graduation it would be time to make decisions on what to do next. Now in those situations there are really two choices. I could have stayed and enjoyed the fact that I had everything I thought I wanted. There's no saying how long it would have lasted, but eventually it would have ended. The other choice was the more painful one. Give it all up for a chance to move onto bigger things. I can't fault people for either choice because each person is different and needs different things. For me though I knew that as much as I wanted to stay that I couldn't. Staying would have meant that I'd give up my chance for something more.
I used to think that life behaved almost like a checklist of achievements. Once you accomplished something then you didn't have to worry about it ever again. No matter what else happened in your life that particular item was checked off. In the years since leaving home and going out on my own I've learned that very few things in life last for any length of time. Since all things end given enough time that means eventually everything has to start brand new at some point. Often these moments come to us when we're already very comfortable in our existing lives. It would be easy to remain fixed and unchanging, but in doing so we limit ourselves to what's beyond right now. I'm not saying that we toss overboard the things in our life that we've established. It's more that we're presented with choices to stick with what we have or go for what comes next. Sometimes it's not even a choice, it's forced on us in a way that our only option is to pick up what's left and move on. Eight months after I graduated from college I was laid off from my first job as a professional. It wasn't something I was expecting considering I had gone to school in order to become marketable and needed in the workforce. It didn't matter what I had prepared for though because I was forced to start over after only being out in the world for a short time. Not long after that I decided to start over again, but this time on my own terms because I knew there were worse things than having to start again.
It's a strange thing to give up what you know for the hope of something better. I know for a lot of people they prefer to stick with the devil they know rather than take a chance on something unknown. I can't really blame them because even in a situation where you're not happy, you at least know what to expect and that brings its own form of comfort. I've found that everything in life has a cost associated with it. Sometimes you have to give up one thing in order to get another. That's just the cost of doing business. Now it's not always true that you're forced to pick between two things, but in a lot of situations we aren't able to have everything, which means something has to take priority. You want your freedom, then you may have to give up everything that's holding you back from being free. You want money, then you may have to spend your free time to get it. You want to be in a place that feels like home, then you have to leave the place that you call home to go find it. All of those situations present us with a choice and we have to decide if we're willing to pay the price associated with what we want.
Thursday, February 10, 2011
On the Illusion
Once a long time ago I went to Florida for Christmas. It was the first time that I could remember not spending it at home, but I got to go to Disney World with my mom so it seemed like a fair trade-off. Now most of the trip was pretty good and I generally look back on the whole trip fondly. There were some rough moments though dealing with extended family. When it came time for pictures to be taken I was the only one not smiling. Back then I wasn't very good at masking my emotions (come to think of it, I'm still not all that great). So the holiday pictures from that Christmas show me pouting while everyone around me is wearing their best smiles. Some might say that I ruined that precious memory, but maybe in some strange way I preserved what it was really like. If I had been more mature I could have smiled like everyone else and years later when people looked back at those pictures they would assume that we were one big happy family. That would be the illusion of tranquility though.
I've talked about nostalgia before and how it tends to alter the past, or at least our perception of the past. They say photographs never lie, but if you've looked at a magazine in the last fifty years you'd know that just about anything can be manipulated. They say you should believe none of what you hear and half of what you see. With easy to use tools like Photoshop it's hard to know if you're really looking at reality. That's really an overt alteration of the past. In a lot of cases the illusion is a lot more subtle. A photograph captures a specific moment. Look at your current day and take five random seconds from it and imagine trying to piece together what your day was really like based on those images. Now granted those moments may be unplanned and many photos are somewhat staged. You stop what you're doing and smile for the camera. Or at the very least acknowledge that it's there.
When I first left for college I stayed in touch with a few people via email, but back then most people didn't really have steady access to a computer and those who did weren't always the best about replying. So in a lot of cases we relied on the old fashion method of writing letters to each other, most of which I still have. The thing with that though is given time eventually it falls by the wayside and you just lose contact with people. These days we have this wonderful thing called Facebook. I'm able to keep in contact with people who normally wouldn't be able to given the constant changes of email addresses or phone numbers. It's this nice central hub that covers most of the things you'd do when catching up with someone. I like being able to read about someone's day or look at pictures of them and their family. There are times when I get down about how I feel like I'm behind in the way of life progression. Looking through my friends list I see so many people my age who are married and have children. Or they're off leading these fun-filled lives. I know this because they post some picture of them at a party in Chicago or them on a sailboat in the South Pacific. The thing is though that like I said before, those pictures represent individual moments and may not exactly paint the full picture. If you're on Facebook then you know that you don't share everything that happens. It's more of a highlight reel. And with any highlight reel it tends to look more exciting than what really happened. Now those pictures and status updates are windows into a much more elaborate life, one that is filled with both the good and bad that comes with it.
So we tend to remember the past in a way that may vary from what really happened. We dream about a future that may never be. Even right now seems to be shaped by what's presented to us, be it intentionally manipulated or simply altered by our perception. Does that mean everything is really an illusion? Maybe the surface is the illusion. You look at a duck on a pond and you only see what's on the surface, but underneath there is so much more going on. People are very much the same way. How far past the surface do we really get with anyone? How much of the world around us is real? Is reality just the illusion we choose to see?
I've talked about nostalgia before and how it tends to alter the past, or at least our perception of the past. They say photographs never lie, but if you've looked at a magazine in the last fifty years you'd know that just about anything can be manipulated. They say you should believe none of what you hear and half of what you see. With easy to use tools like Photoshop it's hard to know if you're really looking at reality. That's really an overt alteration of the past. In a lot of cases the illusion is a lot more subtle. A photograph captures a specific moment. Look at your current day and take five random seconds from it and imagine trying to piece together what your day was really like based on those images. Now granted those moments may be unplanned and many photos are somewhat staged. You stop what you're doing and smile for the camera. Or at the very least acknowledge that it's there.
When I first left for college I stayed in touch with a few people via email, but back then most people didn't really have steady access to a computer and those who did weren't always the best about replying. So in a lot of cases we relied on the old fashion method of writing letters to each other, most of which I still have. The thing with that though is given time eventually it falls by the wayside and you just lose contact with people. These days we have this wonderful thing called Facebook. I'm able to keep in contact with people who normally wouldn't be able to given the constant changes of email addresses or phone numbers. It's this nice central hub that covers most of the things you'd do when catching up with someone. I like being able to read about someone's day or look at pictures of them and their family. There are times when I get down about how I feel like I'm behind in the way of life progression. Looking through my friends list I see so many people my age who are married and have children. Or they're off leading these fun-filled lives. I know this because they post some picture of them at a party in Chicago or them on a sailboat in the South Pacific. The thing is though that like I said before, those pictures represent individual moments and may not exactly paint the full picture. If you're on Facebook then you know that you don't share everything that happens. It's more of a highlight reel. And with any highlight reel it tends to look more exciting than what really happened. Now those pictures and status updates are windows into a much more elaborate life, one that is filled with both the good and bad that comes with it.
So we tend to remember the past in a way that may vary from what really happened. We dream about a future that may never be. Even right now seems to be shaped by what's presented to us, be it intentionally manipulated or simply altered by our perception. Does that mean everything is really an illusion? Maybe the surface is the illusion. You look at a duck on a pond and you only see what's on the surface, but underneath there is so much more going on. People are very much the same way. How far past the surface do we really get with anyone? How much of the world around us is real? Is reality just the illusion we choose to see?
Wednesday, February 9, 2011
On Living
Have you ever found yourself being introduced to someone and immediately asking them a question like "So what do you do for a living?" If you think about it, it's kind of a strange thing to ask someone. It's a great ice breaker and it can at least guide you towards something to talk about. But what are you really learning about that person by finding out how they go about making money? Sure if you come across a contract killer then it's probably saying a lot about their personality, but in the end for them it's just a job. Is it really all that different from someone who has decided to spend forty hours under florescent lights staring at a computer monitor or the guy who owns a restaurant? Then again, maybe in certain situations the job does a very good job of summarizing who that person is or at least who they are willing to be for money. Finding out what someone's does for work doesn't necessarily speak to who they are. If you really wanted to know about a person then you could ask them "So what do you do for life?"
Of course if you're anything like me and were asked that question I would have a hard time answering it. In fact I have a difficult time answering my friends when they ask me what I do for fun. Sometimes I wonder if our forms of entertainment are compromises as much as the jobs we tell ourselves that we need to take in the name of practicality. I watch television because I've always liked television. I read because I've always liked the different stories. Still, in a way they are both practical forms of entertainment given my situation, which itself isn't all that bad. Now I have no desire to scale K2 or sail around the world, but maybe I don't have the desire because it seems unrealistic and unlikely. First off, if I tried to climb K2 I would most likely die. I get winded climbing three flights of stairs at a mile high elevation. Add another 23,000 feet and my heart would probably explode from trying to force blood through my weakened body. I can't even imagine the person who would consider the whole prospect fun in any way.
Various people may ask you what your dream job would be. What would you do if there was nothing holding you back? The biggest thing holding us back is ourselves. It seems almost obvious when you think about. Sure in a lot of cases it could be money, geographic location, training, or family obligations that prevent us from dropping what we've settled for and going for what we want. To be honest some of those factors are there for a reason and in a way they hold us back from jumping off a cliff. On the flip side though I think it's very possible that we allow ourselves to be constrained by limitations. These could be self-imposed or put on us by others. Limitations could come in the form of expectations. For a lot of people there are set expectations that guide what they allow themselves to do or even think. I've talked about dreams and practicality before. Most people have to try and balance what they want and what they have to do. In some cases doing what's necessary overshadows everything. Still this may in fact be the only life we get and one has to question an entire existence spent doing things that don't make one happy. Maybe there is an afterlife where everything is sex and roses, but there is a good chance that this is it. So why not make the most of it before it's over?
Now I'm not saying that you can disregard everything except what makes you happy. The world just doesn't work that way. There are times when you have to put your head down and just get through it. For how long though? What's the point of working in a terrible job for thirty years, only to retire and die in your recliner a few months later? It reminds me of the horse from Animal Farm, trudging forward assuming that if they work hard eventually things will get better. Sometimes they do get better and the hard work is rewarded. More often than not though your only reward is being sent to the glue factory because there's nothing left to take.
I was thinking a bit about our society and how we move through it. From the ages of five to eighteen we're required to go to school and get an education. This education is designed to prepare us for either college for additional education or for entering the workforce. Let's say you go to college. The whole purpose there is to gather even more specialized knowledge. That knowledge is going to be essentially be used for one thing in today's world: to make money. That money will go into paying for our home and our food and whatever else we can think to spend it on. So is that basically saying that our entire education is built on the necessity of earning a wage? The five year old is being taught the alphabet so that eventually they can move onto math and from there understand that forty hours worth of work translates into X amount of money? Are our lives just a great big build up to an eventual paycheck? It makes our society seem like a half-realized idea.
We're a long way from doing something simply for the sake of doing it. I think part of the appeal of Star Trek is that they've managed to create a society that doesn't work because of money. Instead they work for the betterment of everyone. Now it's science fiction because it has aliens and space ships that travel faster than light, but I think the real fantasy is the world were mankind has figured out how move beyond where we are now and onto something greater. Here's a question to think about. Would you continue to do your job if they weren't paying you? Now assume for a second that you didn't actually need the money from your paycheck. Your home was already paid for. You and your family had enough food every day. Add to that you didn't have to live like a hermit and could enjoy life in much the same way you do now. Would you want to do the job you have now or would you go do something else? So when they ask that question about your dream job, that's how it should really be phrased. Is it something you'd do without pay because you love it? If that were the case then an answer to a question like "What do you do for a living?" would really have meaning.
Of course if you're anything like me and were asked that question I would have a hard time answering it. In fact I have a difficult time answering my friends when they ask me what I do for fun. Sometimes I wonder if our forms of entertainment are compromises as much as the jobs we tell ourselves that we need to take in the name of practicality. I watch television because I've always liked television. I read because I've always liked the different stories. Still, in a way they are both practical forms of entertainment given my situation, which itself isn't all that bad. Now I have no desire to scale K2 or sail around the world, but maybe I don't have the desire because it seems unrealistic and unlikely. First off, if I tried to climb K2 I would most likely die. I get winded climbing three flights of stairs at a mile high elevation. Add another 23,000 feet and my heart would probably explode from trying to force blood through my weakened body. I can't even imagine the person who would consider the whole prospect fun in any way.
Various people may ask you what your dream job would be. What would you do if there was nothing holding you back? The biggest thing holding us back is ourselves. It seems almost obvious when you think about. Sure in a lot of cases it could be money, geographic location, training, or family obligations that prevent us from dropping what we've settled for and going for what we want. To be honest some of those factors are there for a reason and in a way they hold us back from jumping off a cliff. On the flip side though I think it's very possible that we allow ourselves to be constrained by limitations. These could be self-imposed or put on us by others. Limitations could come in the form of expectations. For a lot of people there are set expectations that guide what they allow themselves to do or even think. I've talked about dreams and practicality before. Most people have to try and balance what they want and what they have to do. In some cases doing what's necessary overshadows everything. Still this may in fact be the only life we get and one has to question an entire existence spent doing things that don't make one happy. Maybe there is an afterlife where everything is sex and roses, but there is a good chance that this is it. So why not make the most of it before it's over?
Now I'm not saying that you can disregard everything except what makes you happy. The world just doesn't work that way. There are times when you have to put your head down and just get through it. For how long though? What's the point of working in a terrible job for thirty years, only to retire and die in your recliner a few months later? It reminds me of the horse from Animal Farm, trudging forward assuming that if they work hard eventually things will get better. Sometimes they do get better and the hard work is rewarded. More often than not though your only reward is being sent to the glue factory because there's nothing left to take.
I was thinking a bit about our society and how we move through it. From the ages of five to eighteen we're required to go to school and get an education. This education is designed to prepare us for either college for additional education or for entering the workforce. Let's say you go to college. The whole purpose there is to gather even more specialized knowledge. That knowledge is going to be essentially be used for one thing in today's world: to make money. That money will go into paying for our home and our food and whatever else we can think to spend it on. So is that basically saying that our entire education is built on the necessity of earning a wage? The five year old is being taught the alphabet so that eventually they can move onto math and from there understand that forty hours worth of work translates into X amount of money? Are our lives just a great big build up to an eventual paycheck? It makes our society seem like a half-realized idea.
We're a long way from doing something simply for the sake of doing it. I think part of the appeal of Star Trek is that they've managed to create a society that doesn't work because of money. Instead they work for the betterment of everyone. Now it's science fiction because it has aliens and space ships that travel faster than light, but I think the real fantasy is the world were mankind has figured out how move beyond where we are now and onto something greater. Here's a question to think about. Would you continue to do your job if they weren't paying you? Now assume for a second that you didn't actually need the money from your paycheck. Your home was already paid for. You and your family had enough food every day. Add to that you didn't have to live like a hermit and could enjoy life in much the same way you do now. Would you want to do the job you have now or would you go do something else? So when they ask that question about your dream job, that's how it should really be phrased. Is it something you'd do without pay because you love it? If that were the case then an answer to a question like "What do you do for a living?" would really have meaning.
Thursday, February 3, 2011
On A to B
One could argue that life is really all about getting from point A to point B, which would be birth until death. Getting from one point to another may not always be as simple as traveling in a straight line. Even if it, the journey itself could be more important than the destination. At any given moment in our lives we're moving towards something. It may not always feel that way, but no matter where you are, you are going somewhere. In that regard everything is a matter of getting from where we are now to where we're headed. Sometimes the journey to our destination can seem like too much. In some cases it's so overwhelming that rather than take the first step we instead decide to do nothing. I've known people who were so afraid that the first step could put at risk everything they already had, that it was just safer to stick with what they had, even if it meant that they gave up a chance at something potentially better. I've talked about how the future can be unknown and we tend to have a fear of the unknown. Sure there is a very good possibility that everything will work out fine, but there is that ever so slim chance that something could go horribly wrong. We can prepare. We can plan ahead. We can dream up every possible contingency in hopes that we won't be caught off guard. It's all just an attempt to reign in that fear of what could happen that we can't see coming.
So life may simply come down to figuring out the trick on how to get from here to there with the least amount of pain. I've found that a lot of times you have to go a long way around to come a short distance back. Most recently I've been presented with a chance to finally get what I've wanted for a long time. Well at least part of what I want, which could be the start of where other things fall into place. You'd think that having something like that would be a time to celebrate and be happy. While I am in fact happy that the opportunity has shown itself after all this time, there is a part of me that's terrified of what it could mean. I had finally gotten to a point where I had my feet underneath me. It may have not been an ideal situation, but it wasn't all that bad. Then out of the blue the thing I wanted shows up at my door and there is still a sense of disbelief that it's really happening. They say that love finds you when you're not looking for it. This feels very much the same in that regard. Life has a tendency of throwing things at you when you least expect it. That may not be a bad thing either. Sometimes we have to be caught off guard so that we can step up to the situation. With preparation we may end up talking ourselves out of it. At least that's how it's been for me. If this opportunity hadn't come from out of nowhere when it did I could very easily have dragged my feet into ever making a change, always coming up with yet another reason why I couldn't rather than why I should. It's times like that when you have to really choose between what you have and what you want. In some cases you can't have both.
There is a somewhat cynical saying that I've heard: "When God wants to punish us he answers our prayers." It really addresses the fact that often times we don't know what to do with the things we say we want. Very much like a fantasy, it may be better that it stays a fantasy because that way it never will let you down or stray from what you think it should be. People may have this vision of where they're headed. A dream of life. For some it never becomes anything more than a dream. Life went another direction for them. This may not be the dream, but it may be as good or even better than they had ever hoped. For some that dream haunts them. It becomes this goal that is always just out of reach. Maybe one day they'll do what it takes to achieve it or maybe they'll just resign themselves to the fact that it's just a fantasy and give up on it. There are times though when the dream has a chance to become reality. That can be a scary moment. It's at that point when it stops being an abstract concept and moves towards being an actual thing. Then we have to start thinking about how we're going to get from here to there because most dreams require some form of change, otherwise we'd already be living them. Everything that has happened before has brought us to this point. So if we finally make it from A to B successfully and are given what we've wanted all along, then what do we do next? As I said in the beginning, we're always going somewhere. Hopefully we never stop because when we do, that's when the ride is over and it's time to get out. Maybe that's what makes the destination so scary. When we reach it we'll just have to sort out our next one. That idea can be overwhelming. Then again maybe it means we'll always have something to look forward to. Something to work towards.
So life may simply come down to figuring out the trick on how to get from here to there with the least amount of pain. I've found that a lot of times you have to go a long way around to come a short distance back. Most recently I've been presented with a chance to finally get what I've wanted for a long time. Well at least part of what I want, which could be the start of where other things fall into place. You'd think that having something like that would be a time to celebrate and be happy. While I am in fact happy that the opportunity has shown itself after all this time, there is a part of me that's terrified of what it could mean. I had finally gotten to a point where I had my feet underneath me. It may have not been an ideal situation, but it wasn't all that bad. Then out of the blue the thing I wanted shows up at my door and there is still a sense of disbelief that it's really happening. They say that love finds you when you're not looking for it. This feels very much the same in that regard. Life has a tendency of throwing things at you when you least expect it. That may not be a bad thing either. Sometimes we have to be caught off guard so that we can step up to the situation. With preparation we may end up talking ourselves out of it. At least that's how it's been for me. If this opportunity hadn't come from out of nowhere when it did I could very easily have dragged my feet into ever making a change, always coming up with yet another reason why I couldn't rather than why I should. It's times like that when you have to really choose between what you have and what you want. In some cases you can't have both.
There is a somewhat cynical saying that I've heard: "When God wants to punish us he answers our prayers." It really addresses the fact that often times we don't know what to do with the things we say we want. Very much like a fantasy, it may be better that it stays a fantasy because that way it never will let you down or stray from what you think it should be. People may have this vision of where they're headed. A dream of life. For some it never becomes anything more than a dream. Life went another direction for them. This may not be the dream, but it may be as good or even better than they had ever hoped. For some that dream haunts them. It becomes this goal that is always just out of reach. Maybe one day they'll do what it takes to achieve it or maybe they'll just resign themselves to the fact that it's just a fantasy and give up on it. There are times though when the dream has a chance to become reality. That can be a scary moment. It's at that point when it stops being an abstract concept and moves towards being an actual thing. Then we have to start thinking about how we're going to get from here to there because most dreams require some form of change, otherwise we'd already be living them. Everything that has happened before has brought us to this point. So if we finally make it from A to B successfully and are given what we've wanted all along, then what do we do next? As I said in the beginning, we're always going somewhere. Hopefully we never stop because when we do, that's when the ride is over and it's time to get out. Maybe that's what makes the destination so scary. When we reach it we'll just have to sort out our next one. That idea can be overwhelming. Then again maybe it means we'll always have something to look forward to. Something to work towards.
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