A Success Story!

Air in my lungs.  A full belly.  Hard earned friendships, though few but so very cherished.  Healthy family.  A large and smooth shit first thing in the morning that leaves not a trace of its existence behind.  I don't believe ambition is something we're born with.  It's learned.  Adapted.  Then jammed down our throats as we age until our dreams are tainted nightmarish versions of happier times.  Perhaps ambition isn't the term I yearn for...no, the word I'm searching for is harsher, colder, more cut-throat.  The kind of sounding word that sticks in your throat and hurts on the way down.  It's a positive thing to look for purpose.  To desire.  To have an appetite for things, anything, is crucial.  Maybe it's just the type of ambition I'm trying to describe.  We're told very early on to 'be somebody.'  'Be someone.'  Aren't I?  Do I need a career hawking wares to achieve 'someone' status?  The status of having a title, a label, a neat box to fit into so when making small talk I can fit in?  Ah, status.  Perhaps that's the abhorred word I am hunting down.  I have an old computer by today's standards.  I love it.  It craps out.  Crashes sometimes.  Slow as fuck.  It always comes back and it serves the purpose I require of it.  I don't need a new one because this one is old.  It functions and that's all anyone needs.  I refuse to buy in(literally cuz that's seemingly what's necessary to be acknowledged in our consumerist society).  I refuse to replace that which could serve me still.  Maybe I'm just getting old and my attachment to that which exists inanimately grows on me like moss on a shady river rock.  I long for things, sure.  I long to be a better person everyday.  I long for other people to be better people....every fucking day.  I make strides to do good.  To be good.  I don't want to be a part of the problem.  I own enough slaves already with my six year old computer.  Hopefully they died long ago of aids and I can dispose of at least one element of guilt.  What?!  I didn't give them the HIV.

I can't work retail/sales anymore.  It's evil.  Surely part of the problem if not the catalyst for most of life's unhappiness.  We don't need to be shown what to buy.  We need to stop buying.  Stop buying in.  A new system is required for all that nasty shit to dissipate and if I had the answer for fuck sake, I would share it with you all.  I don't.  So in the meantime, I choose not to buy what i don't need and trust me friends, I don't need a lot.  If we had fewer choices to consume, we'd consume less.  We'd be less traumatized when we went out into the world and even those I work against would benefit.  It's true.  With so many options in front of us, we buy less and feel more turmoil.  We can't decide between 300 different olive oils so we choose none.  Less choice would benefit us all.  Especially when it comes to the products we don't actually need.

The nagging voice of R. Lee Ermey in my head dictates that I should 'BE MORE STUPID!  DO MORE STUPID!  GODDAMN SON, DON'T BE SO STUPID!'   The baby-boomers didn't mean to leave us with this as their legacy but here we are.  The women left the homes, the men, seem born emasculated and the children wander in a daze wondering how they can achieve all that they can to be the best darn so and so they can be.  Don't be the best.  Just do good.  Do good everyday.  Be good...everyday.  Wet your appetite on them there crackers.  I feel insatiable some days.  Getting what I want all the time has made me this way.  I've been spoiled and nothing I get will every sate me long.  I am the hungriest of all hungryhungry hippos.  I hate it.  I spend time being grateful but always with the wanting more....more....MORE!  I want to be settled in my joy.  Not always looking for the next best thing, person, day.  Just being good, doing good and accepting that being present in that is enough.  I am a piece of kelp being tossed perpetually by an ocean wave against a sandy shore.  Forever stretching out towards the sandy beach but as soon as I touch the earth the next wave picks me up and moves me up and away once more.  I never leave this spot but I'm always moving.  Going nowhere but a part of it all.  There is calmness in that and great frustration.  The goal I suppose is to merge the two and be grateful for whatever part I play, no matter it's degree of perceived prosperity.