Crossposted at DailyKos
Hey, George, Dick, Don… You got enough stuff yet? Think a few more bombs and a few more thousand dead children and a stranglehold on a desert full of oil is gonna keep you from dying? Not going to happen, pal. I can’t believe you all managed to get so old and never learned a goddamned thing about what life is really all about…
I’ve spent enough time in AA meetings in Hollywood, watching the richest of the rich and the most famous of the famous crawl in on their hands and knees in agony and emptiness and terror… to know that NONE of that shit means a DAMN if you don’t have self-respect and love in your life.
Having finally found self-respect and love in my life, it occurred to me yesterday, just what is it about the people on the VH1 “Envy Us” showcases that I envy? Okay — I didn’t get the rich and I didn’t get the famous — but I have everything that anyone truly wants, if they sit down and think about it long enough.
See that rich guy at the bar, scoping out chicks? He’s got all the stuff, man. He might even be a big movie star or a hot shot broker or a tycoon. And maybe he hasn’t figured it out yet, but after he’s fucked as many women as it takes to realize he’s missing the love and the self-respect, he’s going to drive home in his fabulous car (or in the back of his own limousine), look around his fabulous home, paid for with his fabulous bank account, the account made fat with his earnings from his fabulous, glamourous career — and he’s going to wonder why the fuck he isn’t happy.
Sure, you could interpret this as my brilliant rationalization for choosing to be content with what I have, or for lacking the “ambition” to “achieve” and to “acquire.” But it doesn’t feel that way to me. I had lots of chances to marry wealth, even if I didn’t have what it took to get it on my own. I passed. Sometimes, when the bills got behind and the car broke down and I, like a moron, turned on “E” and watched the beautiful people, I felt like an asshole for waiting for love. Maybe I should have married Whatsisface, even though I didn’t love him and I always got the feeling he liked the IDEA of being with me more than he actually liked ME.
Well, while it may have taken me a while to realize it, I have everything a human being could possibly need. It’d be nice to have more stuff, I guess. I could dig driving a Bentley up the driveway to my Malibu mansion, I guess. But not if it meant giving up what I have now. I have love. I have a spouse who loves me and a child we both adore who thinks we hung the moon.
Wouldn’t trade it for anything.
I’m sure I’ll forget this tomorrow. It’s not like this is some new revelation.
its the secret of life, but its so easy to forget. thanks for the reminder. and here’s the harder question: do we have to leave the dirty business of politics to greedy climbers? they seem to be the only ones with the stomach for it…
My very first diary on dKos had one comment. You slapped me down for repetitive content. I had been lurking for years and therefore your username was, shall we say, familiar. It was thrilling to be noticed by you. Naturally, I was more careful from then on. : )
Later, when I needed help getting a diary recommended, I turned to you and you pulled it off. I developed a small crush on you, even before I saw your pictures.
——–
You are right that a few more thousands of bombs or billions or dead will not make them happy but then they are NOT pursuing happiness, they are after power. To be trite, their thirst is unquenchable and will expand until it meets its, or our, breaking point.
——–
Many kisses from Greece from a fan and admirer. Much love to you and yours.
That happens to all of us. Me. ElizabethJames. You. All of us. That darn Maryscott. She’s a good writer.
She sure is. I believe she is even parodied in a West Wing episode. : )
Now if only someone will tell me what I did wrong in this diary which I had such high hopes for. This is not whoring, this is a genuine attempt to figure out what went wrong. Is it the title? Is it simply inane? Feel free to flame.
This was fun to read, but I can’t help you in the analysis department. I suck at naming diaries.
Sorry.
Love your writing. . .title sucks. I would never have opened it, oops I didn’t open it to read because I thought it probably was some serious highly intellectual discussion of political theory, or such. And Frankly I was just worn out yesterday from all the happenings this week, so I wasn’t looking for anything “sirius”. Others may have just been to drained to want to read anything too serious also.
I usually am pretty good at titles, but I am so tired in the wee hours now that all I got was “Are you sirius?” So by all means, don’t take any advice from me at this point (possibly never, your call on that one). But the title is really all you have to draw people in. It needs to have something that will make folks wonder or want to know more or something like that. I think titles for diaries are a little tougher than for books or essays, etc.
As I said, don’t be quick to take my advice. The way I write is when I have the title and the ending I suddenly know everything that is going in between. Plenty of others , who probably know more, do it differently. I have a draw full of titles, that I haven’t spent time feeling for the ending, so they have no place to go but the drawer.
Keep at it, you will figure it out. The time of day you posted seems pretty reasonable, maybe a little early for the West Coasters, but probably fine here with our slower scroll by. However there has been the influx of newbies and lost of new diaries posted, more than the usual numbers, so, I wouldn’t judge much of anything by this week.
The title does suck. Oh, well, I had fun with it.
I’ve spent hours (okay many minutes) typing out diaries that I though were funny and insightful…and got about 3 comments.
Then one morning I was feeling kind of pissy because I thought I was going to need a root canal, so I whipped off and posted a diary about the state of dental care in the US…and got about 90 comments…
My advice: Don’t post a diary hoping that people will come and read it…post a diary because it’s either something you feel strongly about or because you’re in the mood to write and have fun posting your own musings..
I was in the mood to write and I did have fun posting my own musings. I am not complaining, just curious.
Ask me next time. : )
Roger wilco. : )
That story pretty much wrote itself but a good title did not suggest itself and in the end I went with a really lousy one. What would you have called it?
Just kidding. Haven’t time to post — will get back…
It’s unfamiliar to me. Since I don’t read science fiction, am not a trekie, don’t care for Lucas or Spielberg, I don’t get the metaphor. That’s why I suggest an intro in italics to take a person into the world you present.
It was an attempt to change the viewpoint about the Iraq war. What if the US had been invaded in much the same way as we invaded Iraq? Would a powerful outside force have any chance of ‘improving’ America or would they make a disaster both for us and for them, even though they avoided some of BushCos most egregious mistakes?
I think I may also have been trying to cram too many points into a diary, which is usually a prescription for disaster.
Thanks.
There is your intro right there and it is a good one.
John Hershy wrote “White Lotus” a story of the invasion of the United States by China. It was a great premise and an unforgettable book.
Mary Scott,
You wrote my own life here. Hugs and more love.
It doesn’t take many words to speak the truth – Chief Joseph
You know, I had this conversation with a friend last night. How people buy things and buy things, like an addiction, thinking if they just get the next thing, it will make them happy. And of course, it doesn’t. But instead of learning that, they think that they just didn’t get the right thing, and what they really need is something else.
Thanks for the profundity tonight, Maryscott. Very cool and very wise.
I’m content to be retired with plenty of time to listen to my Jeff Beck and Stevie Ray Vaughan CDs all day long.<g>
I took a few group guitar classes about six years ago… I was a little surprised to see the that vast majority of my classmates were ritirees. Almost all were trying it for the first time. I think that was when I first started to realize just how enormous life’s potential is, and that I wasn’t in any way constrained or trapped by choices I’d already made.
Anyways, I’m just wondering if I should picture you trading solos with Stevie on some of these occasions.
Finally got my degree after xx years, worked in that job for about 7 years. Quit to stay home with my still-small-enough-to-matter children.
While I’ve been home, I’ve taken up (1) stained glass, (2) piano and (3) sewing. I’m just about to do my first big “swags and tails,” so I’m a little nervous.
Then, on top of that, I’m going back to school to become alternatively certified to teach. Another career.
I guess when I retire from that, I can take up guitar … or go back to crayons, who knows 🙂
Not to disappoint but I’m not at all good with my fingers, unless it has something to do with food.<g>
I think that no amount of lessons would ever get me in a class with SRV or Beck, right now Johnny Winter is in my headphones, another favorite!
Also, it isn’t just that they can’t seem to get enough stuff for themselves, but they seem to need to take lots of stuff away from other people. Not their friends, but everybody else. Gimme gimme gimme. Mine mine mine. Goody goody goody. More more more.
To some, wealth is relative. It achieves the same effect to burn somebody elses house down as it does to build one for themselves. The best for them, of course, is to remove your wealth and assign it to them. These folks, by definition, cannot be truly happy unless they have everything, literally, or everybody around them has nothing. Perception of wealth as relative is pretty destructive.
He/She who dies with the most toys wins, NOT! Yes, thank you MSOC, we all need to be reminded sometimes.
perhaps we now need a diary with the inverse title, “The Life of meaning” ?????
Like you MaryScott, I to have a spouse that loves me, a son who thinks I am magnificent and a daughter who’s eyes light up everytime I pick her up. I too used to think that if I had enough money in the bank, the right address, the right car, the right job, the right everything I too could be happy. I had many of those things when I lived in San Diego, married to a lawyer, a 300,000 dollar home on 1/2 an acre, a well paying job, using more drugs and drinking than I could afford and I still ended up a homeless derelict living in a cardboard box on sixth avenue downtown. I have more than enough today and my wife asks me these very simple questions when I get in that mood, about not having enough. Do you still love me? Do you still love your children? Do you believe that we love you? I always answer yes to these questions and she responds, “then all is right with the world right now isn’t it”.
I am slowly turning into my grandfather. He was this thin man who always wore slacks and a gardening cap with the brim turned up in the back. When I was younger I suspected he might be Frank Sinatra in diguise. Actually, he was the first in the family business, pastoring.
Grandpa’s two main hobbies were smoking Kools and picking weeds out of his lawn. He’d putter around all afternoon if you let him. On the other hand, he found a lot of four-leaf clovers.
He was a wingut before there was a word for such a thing: my dad says his father’s reading was limited to the Bible and Guideposts magazine. He was given to occasionally letting drop an indifferent, bigoted remark. He was a hard man, he made my dad’s early life hell, and it took me years to learn to love him. I never fully relented until the last time I saw him, old and frail and confined to a wheelchair. At the very end of his life, his doctors had put him on Prozac, and he’d turned into this sweet little elf. He wasnted nothing more than to sit and hold my wife’s hand and smile at her.
Bastard. I wasn’t ready to stop being angry at him.
Anyway, I’m not allowed to smoke. But I do get to play in the yard. It’s a good thing, since it’s absolutely overrun with dandelions, pyreia, and wild strawberry. The latter is the bane of my existence. I start digging, and I can’t stop pulling the damn stuff up. I’ve ripped up half the lawn! I’m seeding along behind me, but by this rate, it’ll be 2010 by the time I get the place fixed up.
But there’s what I learned from Grandpa. It only happens little by little. If you’re patient, you’ll get a pretty decent lawn and a quiet afternoon.
There are days when that’s all I could wish for.
Anybody got a Kool?
Guessing game.
Hints: He died of cancer. He helped create the government of the 1980s.
None other!
Rove’s change of heart will come on his deathbed, too. If he still has a heart.
Wow.
Wonder whether Karl wil be visited by three spirits this Christmas Eve, heralded by the ghost of Lee Atwater, wearing “the chains he forged in life”?
had to google him…
I knew that, although I did not hate him, I did celebrate his death. Just like I did when J Edgar Hoover died.
“So that was Mrs. Lundegaard on the floor in there. And I guess that was your accomplice in the wood chipper. And those three people in Brainerd. And for what? For a little bit of money. There’s more to life than a little money, you know. (She passes the silent Paul Bunyan statue on the outskirts of Brainerd.) Don’t you know that? And here ya are, and it’s a beautiful day. Well, I just don’t understand it.”
-Frances McDormand (“Marge”), Fargo (1996)
Unfortunately, the greedmongers you are talking about get endless positive reinforcement not only by making themselves rich, but by enriching their cronies, their kids, etc. And I’m not so sure they are always unhappy. I would love to think they are, as a kind of karmic justice, but I really don’t think it’s necessarily so. I think they are often so shallow and amoral that they can live with themselves just fine and dandy.
Alan
Maverick Leftist
that Lynn Cheney isn’t with Dick because he’s a wonderful, warm, loving, and kind husband and father?
Naw, me either.
I do think she’s in love with the Halliburton checks however. “Yeah, whatever, Dick, just leave a check on the table before you go”.
The consumerists and power brokers just don’t want more, they want to enlarge the gap between them and the rest of us.
I am broke, happy and in love with a healthy husband and daughter.
Our democracy is in trouble. Our country is in trouble because it can no longer see the struggle that normal people are engaged in on a daily basis.
The problem is not that the progessives and liberal democrats can’t find their message…the problem is our representative government doesn’t see voters as their constituency, they see the corporate contributors as their constituency. The legislate for the dollar and they celebrate the bullet.
Ooops…sorry MaryScott, I forgot for a minute that this wasn’t a political thread. It is clearly about self-respect, love and self-reliance…but money and power doesn’t buy that AND that is what they don’t get. George, Dick, Don just don’t get it.
The personal IS political.
I guess that explains my gut reaction to your beautifully written diary.
Time for a little Al Green…Love and Happiness. I’m mellower already.
If we all were happy with our current possessions, who would generate the profits?
Those OLD blankety-blanks are so passe, must buy the up-to-date models. Now we need antiseptic hand gel. Now we need (oops, my bad) swags and tails for window TREATMENTS … what ever happened to drapes and curtains? No, now we have “window treatments”.
I believe I just recently saw a dishwasher cleaner … no, not dishwashing soap or detergent, but a whole new cleaner to keep your dishwasher clean. Yep, now we need that too!
The ulitmate, to me, and I know I’ve mentioned this on other threads … designer toilet-bowl-brushes. Yes, now, even your toilet-bowl-bush, too, should be newly updated and color-coordinated, possibly brushed nickel???
YYYEEEEAAAARRRRGGGGHHHHH!!!!
This:
is why when my wife asks me what I want for Christmas, my birthday or Fathers Day, I tell her I already have everything I need.
But my husband rolls his eyes “books and cds! books and cds!”
But honey, I don’t really need anything else!
When our daughter was two and she wanted to have her
afternoon nap, she asked me to ‘turn off the sun.’
You hit on the key to a happy state of mind, Maryscott,
that is, being grateful.
Thank you.
LOL.
I’m flashing back to when our oldest was about three (more than a quarter of a century ago now). We had just had a major ice storm, the worst I can remember even now. We had spent the night before listening for hours to a series of what sounded like gunshots as one hugh tree limb after another cracked and fell, and what we saw in the morning was that the ground for miles was littered with the dbris. Our back fence was crushed, as was a neighbor’s car.
So when we took our daughter out for a ride I kind of expected her comments on the devastation as she pointed out the window: “Tree fall down! Tree fall down!” But I wasn’t prepared for what she said next: “Fix it, Mommy! Fix it!”
I was much more dazzled by money until I saw how it was made – business isn’t pretty, nor compassionate, nor – well a lot of positive things, or things that I value as positive.
Reading about the BIG corporations can be make your blood run cold – a coup in Guatemala for United Fruit Company for one example.
If we had a government that valued people over business, a lot of us wouldn’t have to spend so much time making sure we had enough money to take of our medical needs, and those of our family and extended family; possible lay-offs; a dignified retirement; housing costs in a real estate bubble; personal transportation instead of dependable and safe public transportation; and on and on.
I would rather live in a society that had equitable income distribution instead of having my personal horde (which isn’t going to happen, short of divine intervention, and I’ve surely blown that option) to be a lavish consumer. Such a society would allow many more of us to spend more time with our loved ones, with less stress, and more to give emotionally.
Sorry that the post sort of wandered off topic.
[also posted at dKos – with an error that spellcheck caught here – love that feature!]
Tim O’Brien
He was a short slender young man of about twenty. I was afraid of him-afraid of something-and as he passed me on the trail I threw a grenade that exploded at his feet and killed him.
Or to go back:
Shortly after midnight we moved into the ambush site outside My Khe. The whole platoon was there, spread out in the dense brush along the trail, and for five hours nothing at all happened. We were working in two-man teams-one man on guard while the other slept, switching off every two hours-and I remember it was still dark when Kiowa shook me awake for the final watch. The night was foggy and hot. For the first few moments I felt lost, not sure about directions, groping for my helmet and weapon. I reached out and found three grenades and lined them up in front of me; the pins had already been straightened for quick throwing. And then for maybe half an hour I kneeled there and waited. Very gradually, in tiny slivers, dawn began to break through the fog, and from my position in the brush I could see ten or fifteen meters up the trail. The mosquitoes were fierce. I remember slapping at them, wondering if I should wake up Kiowa and go get some repellent, then thinking it was a bad idea, then looking up and seeing the young man come out of the morning fog. He wore black clothing and rubber sandals and a gray ammunition belt. His shoulders were slightly stooped, his head cocked to the side as if listening for something. He seemed at ease. He carried his weapon in one hand, muzzle down, moving without any hurry up the center of the trail. There was no sound at all – none that I can remember. In a way, it seemed, he was part of the morning fog, or my own imagination, but there was also the reality of what was happening in my stomach. I had already pulled the pin on a grenade. I had come up to a crouch. It was entirely automatic. I did not hate the young man; I did not see him as the enemy; I did not ponder issues of morality or politics or justice. I crouched and kept my head low. I tried to swallow whatever was rising from my stomach, which tasted like lemonade, something fruity and sour. I was terrified. There were no thoughts about killing. The grenade was to make him go away-just evaporate-and leaned back and felt my head go empty and then felt it fill up again. I had already thrown the grenade before telling myself to throw it. It was gone. The brush was thick and I had to lob it high, not aiming, and I remember the grenade seeming to freeze above me for an instant, as if a camera had clicked, and I remember ducking down and holding my breath and seeing little wisps of fog rise from the earth. The grenade bounced once and rolled across the trail. I did not hear it, but there must’ve been a sound, because the young man dropped his weapon and began to run, just two or three quick steps. Then he looked down at the grenade, turned to his right, and tried to cover his head but never did. It occurred to me then that he was about to die. I wanted to warn him. The grenade made a popping noise – not loud, not what you’d expect. Just a pop, and there was a puff of dust and smoke and the young man seemed to jerk upward as if pulled by invisible wires. He fell on his back. His rubber sandals had been blown off. He lay at the center of the trail, his right leg bent beneath him, his one eye shut, his other eye a huge star-shaped hole.
For me, it was not a matter of live or die. There was no real peril. Almost certainly the young man would have passed me by. And it will always be that way.
Later, I remember, Kiowa tried to tell me that the man would’ve died anyway. He told me that it was a good kill, that I was a soldier and this was a war, that I should shape up and stop staring, that I should ask myself what the dead man would’ve done if things were reversed.
But you see, none of it mattered. The words, or language, far too complicated. All I could do was gape at the fact of the young man’s body.
Even now, three decades later, I haven’t finished sorting it out. Sometimes I forgive myself, other times I don’t. In the ordinary hours of life I try not to think about it, but now and then, when I’m reading a newspaper or just sitting alone in a room, I’ll look up and see the young man coming out of the morning fog. I’ll watch him walk toward me, his shoulders slightly stooped, his head cocked to the side, and he’ll pass within a few yards of me and suddenly smile at some secret thought and then continue up the trail to where it bends back into the fog.
Um, the book was meant to be a bridge between the experiences of all of you, the things you carry through your lives, that I carry through my own – physical burdens but also spiritual, the things we’ll all carry to our graves. It was also meant to be an act of honor for the dead, those ghosts in my life, from my past, not just guys in Vietnam, uh, but, you know the little girl who dies at the end of the book, uh, based on a real person. And all of us again, I think, war aside, do carry with us the ghosts of our own history, um, even the ghosts of ourselves as we were, as you guys were, say, eighteen years ago, that little girl, that little boy, if you were to look into a photograph from way back then and see a little gleam of yourself in that little girl, little boy’s eyes, the you is still present, and that person is a ghost inside all of us.
I ‘had’ to read that book for my freshman English class in college. One of the most poignant and powerful books I’ve ever read. Thanks for quoting it here.
Me too.
My ex-girlfriend gets the credit for introducing his books to me. Read that one on a plane to Europe and back. Couldn’t sleep or put it down…
Wow!
I’m in awe – absolutely in awe. The most compelling piece of writing I’ve read in a long time. The things we carry. Thank you for posting this.
You can buy Tim O’Brien’s novel here
Barnes and Noble has a higher “Buy Blue” rating than Amazon.com. Didn’t know that!
Just checked and his book is available at my local Chapters, and now it’s so on my errands list for tomorrow. Thanks again!
Love your diary. It is somethingthat we all cold do something about..I know I just talked long distance to a friend tonight and said the same thing. In many ways, Maryscott, we are so much richer than those of the $$$$$ lifestyle of whom you mentioned.
I do not want to sound wicked here with this statement, but I would love to see them hit rock bottom and look upon them with pity…and say they caused it themselves. But then again that is just not the way I want to see it…but wouldnt it be great to see them loose great sums of money and feel baddly about it?
I really wonder how happy these ppl are truly. We all strive to do more and do better with ourlives..but not in the way these kind of pll do things.
(to be clear, not my diary – but a great one that this topic reminded me of…)
“Everything I Own, Owns Me”
Some days, I don’t enjoy being in my own house. I walk in the door, and instead of seeing a haven, I see projects: dishes, laundry, mail to sort, walls I was going to paint, carpet I was going to have cleaned, broken things I’d meant to fix. Everywhere I look, there’s some thing that needs to be done.
My “stuff” makes claims on me daily. And my stuff, and your stuff, is in danger of destroying the world as we know it. Does that sound melodramatic? Follow me after the jump for a view of the real impact “stuff” has on us–both personally and globally.
http://www.dailykos.com/story/2005/3/17/11340/5067
remember it fondly. Of course, I have some stuff… issues.
Best diary ever written there, I think.
One of my friends said something a few days ago that, if you can manage to keep it in mind, puts a lot of things into perspective:
“Oh, well. It’s just money.”
It’s only about stuff for the ordinary folks of the bottom 99% of the economy.
What these people want is the world. They want to conquer it, or improve it, change it, or just screw around with it.
We occasionally hear rich people talk about money as something that’s used “to keep score.” I think that says it very plainly. It’s not what they want to own–it’s what they want to run.
So while for 99% of us, getting a 2nd million wouldn’t change our basic lives very much, at the top .001%, it can be crucial to pick up that 2nd hundred billion dollars.
They do seem to be playing hard for it.
Another brilliant post from Maryscott (yawn). 🙂
Hey, George, Dick, Don…
They might get it on their deathbeds. I wouldn’t want to be them.
I actually sit around and think about these things so it’s always nice to know others do as well.
My short answer about those people is that they are living unexamined lives.
My longer answer is that sometimes people insulate themselves from those with differing opinions. So it becomes possible to have opinions and not fully understand them or even why we have them.
A great example is to take a word you use infrequently then see if you can define it. You may know what it means and yet not be able to explain it because you’ve never really thought about it.
If no one else is there to ask us what something means or why we believe something we must ask ourselves. Sadly most people don’t do that. We believe what we believe and never debate it with others or, more importantly, with ourselves. We then surround ourselves on the internet and in life with others who believe as we believe who then reinforce our beliefs. A type of group think I suppose.
You don’t often see many jews and baptists sitting down and respectfully discussing their beliefs in God. And when we want to talk about politics do we seek out a diverse group of politicos to converse with? Of course not, we head towards the first group that matches our beliefs and talk about it there.
We lose so much that way. I’m an atheist and one of my closest friends is a fundamentalist Church of Christ member. I was once explaining an incident to someone who interrupted to ask me how I could get along with someone from that church (they considered it chock full of wingnuts). I explained that I had fully examined and accepted my beliefs as she had hers. So neither of us felt it necessary for the other one to validate what we believed. Which left us comfortable with our choices and able to respect each other.
So those people you mention live their lives believing what they believe and thinking it will bring them happiness. And never questioning.
I was just about to post a diary: “What Is Your Joy?” when I saw this. We’re on the same track.
But I will share this, found while blog surfing tonight:
The Dance of Joy
At the bottom of the page is the artist’s statement:
Joy can be elusive. When you have it hold onto it … tightly!
So, going into the weekend after a hard week, it is especially pertinent to name and meditate upon our joys.
Mine? My family, my friends, my writing.
And all that “stuff” that owns me? All those words of others not in this circle? Phffft!
I think the creation of a culture where people are taught to want more, more, more is one of the ways the power brokers control the larger mass of people. If you don’t shop and can see clearly the futility of too much acquisition, you question the established order. And that, boys and girls, is dangerous because the power brokers live in fear of losing their power when “the people” figure out what we all know:
You. Can’t. Take. It. With. You.
I remember a comment you made in a similarly self-reflective diary I wrote, agreeing with my punch line: people are stupid.
I tried to explain my take on this phrase, which I called (half-jokingly) my philosophy of life. You amazed me by echoing my fascination with the applicability of the phrase to life.
How do you fit that realization into your Taoist wisdom tonight? I’m not challenging–I’m genuinely curious.
Look in the mirror, I say to myself.
People are stupid. We have it all right in front of us, and still we listen to the commercials and the celebrities and the MARKETING DEPARTMENTS telling us we need MORE to be TRULY happy.
And then we trot right out and buy it. Or steal it. Or seethe with envy of those who have it when we cannot.
Before I ever started blogging, I touched COUNTLESS people’s lives — even saved a few — through AA and my particular way of “sharing.” Did I listen, when they came up to me years later after I spoke at a big meeting, when they told me, “You saved my life,” or “You say things I feel but that I can’t say?”
Sure. I nodded and said Thanks and all that — but only years later do I realize that I have been fulfilling my purpose all along — while looking in another direction, coveting STUFF.
I think we’re all going to have a good laugh when we’re all in heaven together, and this all is as simple to comprehend as a children’s story book.
Simple. Not easy.
The liberation of realizing people are stupid, for me at least, is in remembering my roots, and accepting the obligation to move beyond them.
My own stupidity has been epic, exasperating, utterly tiresome and finally inevitable. One thing I’ve learned from it, is to forgive others and thereby–sometimes–forgive myself. How can I judge others harshly for my own faults? I can see in others that same fallibility, love them for it, and learn to love myself as well. Humility is the repose of the heart. Forgiveness is its work.
And yet, forgiveness for my own faults has to come with the expectation of learning. Acceptance of my stupidity doesn’t mean surrender to it. Stumbling forward, trying to avoid the same mistakes, and accepting that I will make new ones, is what I demand of myself.
Your experience of gratitude offered at AA meetings has been my experience in my work as well. The lives I’ve saved, the suffering I’ve ended, the families I’ve held together for a while longer, the grief I’ve eased… these are my accomplishments in life. I demand the most of myself in these moments… the work of my life. My stupidity serves me here as well… allowing me understand the people who need my help, helping me to communicate the lessons I’ve learned, granting me the patience to try again and again–and again–to give them what they need.
My successes sustain me. My failures teach me. My struggles give me more capacity to love. My stupidity sustains the struggle and powers the successes.
Thank you for the wisdom tonight. After a week of pie, it’s good to read.
You have everything you need. It’s always amazing how many people don’t recognize that, I suppose because we live in a world where advertising and the keeping up with the Jones makes one feel like they need more. You are blessed by what you have and even more so for recognizing it.
If I could bottle this wisdom and open it whenever I forget that in my own life I’d be much happier. Sometimes I slip, but not as often as I used to.
Thanks for this. I’ve been angry most of the day and this has helped to dissipate that some.
I honestly don’t want to rain on this love fest, but it seems to me that you still feel that the big expensive things are the objects your still striving for.Mansion in Malibu and a Bentley…c’mon…11 miles to the gallon babe.
http://www.fueleconomy.gov/feg/noframes/16743.shtml
Yup — being a stay-at-home mom is surely gonna get me that bling.
Dude — if I had the money to buy a Bentley, I’d get a Prius and fucking do something worthwhile with the balance. Trust me on this.
Apologies. A more appropriate word, would have been ‘yearning’.
Thanks for responding, sunshine.
Some years ago I came across the unfinished autobiography of a famous ocean physicist by the name of Henry Stommel. I was delighted to find the following gem there:
..is the proper spelling, sorry.
I could write about the places I’ve been, the people I’ve seen.. living in handmade cardboard shacks in enormous shanty towns, corrugated tin for a roof and washing clothes in the same “creek” behind their “house” they use for a sewer… but to an American it’s always something “out there”, unreal..
Instead I’ll tell you about the Americans I’ve seen.. sitting in my office at 4am, waiting for it, it’s always inevitable that people give up the ghost in the small hours of the morning.. being paged and going up to the room, the family grieving, sometimes a priest or religious pastor/rabbi there, sometimes not. My job was simply to wheel the dead down to an elevator and use a key to take it two levels below what the public would ever see, down to the large refrigerated room where the rich, the poor, the black, the white, the old and the newborn all lie in complete equality…
I’ll tell you about sitting in another office at 4am, waiting for it.. the page again. Going to the scene, blue lights flashing, the wailing of the family, the curiosity seekers craning their necks to see the blood.. the sad and dirty details of the last violent moment of someone’s life. Was it a woman who lived with the wrong man and finally paid the ultimate price? Was it a drug or alcohol fueled dispute? Was it a child who cried too much in front of an impatient parent? And then the black wagon shows up, slowly backing into the yard, and out comes the black plastic bag with the county’s initials… and off they go to the same refrigerated room where side by side, the rich and the poor, the black and the white, the young and the old all lie in complete equality…
I’ve seen the end of life so much that to me the myth of living forever has been shattered. And I’ve seen so many lives end on an unfinished note.. dreams unfulfilled, loved ones left alone and abandoned.. all in the blink of an eye. What does money or ambition or fame mean? You’re all the same now…
Perhaps tomorrow another person (I’m retired) may get the page and it’ll be you they will come to see.. or even me. And they’ll say, well there goes the end of X, and smoke their cigars and take their pictures and write their notes and give your family phone numbers of people to call for comfort.
If tomorrow is your day, are you ready? If today is the last day you get, are you doing what you want to do? Are you who you want to be? Have you loved the ones you love? Have you told them? Have you made your peace with your enemies and your demons? Because tomorrow may be your day… never forget today is a present and it may be the last gift you ever receive…
Pax
its about power.
Like gooserock said above, to the superrich, money is just the pokerchips in the cardgame of life. Its not about how many you have, its that you have more than anyone else.
But its not even just about winning, tho I suspect that’s a huge part.
Its about the power.
That makes it sound ominous, but I don’t think its “I WILL RULE THE WORLD” ominous. Rather its ominous in its banality.
Power lets you help those you feel are worthy of helping. I can give a homeless man a meal, a powerful person can build them a shelter and a soup kitchen.
Power lets you reward those you like. I can give my friend a gift, a powerful person can arrange for them to have a job and take care of them that way for life.
Power lets you punish those you don’t like. I can block-walk and lit-drop to oust a politician I don’t like. A powerful person can fund TV ads and strip political support.
And that’s just personal wealth, personal power.
Imagine what controlling government power could do.
You could remake the country in your image. Launch alternative energy research (I think I saw that in a comment above, too). Provide family planning to all of the world. Free healthcare. Protect the lakes, streams, and forests. Vaccinate the world against all diseases.
I could argue there is nothing wrong with wanting any of those goals. They all require power, require wealth. So seeking wealth and power alone need not be wrong or greedy. Unless that’s the path you took to get it.
Still, I don’t know what’s scarier —
Reagan was a menace, but I honestly believe he fell into the first group. I believe to my core he was wrong and the society he was trying to create could not last and would hurt millions of people.
But these guys are nuts. Evil, scheming nuts, mind you. Still, I can’t say with any certainty that I think they fall in that first camp, and my fears are they fall much closer to the latter.
is born of fear.
These guys are filled with fear, and that fear has led them, step by step, down a path that has turned them black inside.
I wrote a diary about THIS, too — The Fork in the Road to Hell.
Inspired by, of all things, Star Wars III.
this is the lesson of the Big Lebowski vs. the Little Lebowski.
And if you haven’t seen the film, and you can deal with a lot of foul language, you should make it a priority.
“Fuck it dude, let’s go bowling”, is not a mantra for the irresponsible. It’s a mantra for those that are hung up on stupid shit.
Hey Maryscott. . .
Nice to see you over here wading in the Frog Pond. Everything you said is spot on. Funny thing is 20 or 30 years from now you will look around you at your modest belongings (by wealth standards) and ask yourself why the heck you have so darn much stuff, and how did you manage to get so darn much stuff. And you will remember that you had it right all along. The things that matter, you have the very best of.
On this question, I often think about a conversation between Celie and Mr. at the end of Alice Walker’s book “The Color Purple.”
Mr. is talking about all of the big questions in life and says, “I think us here to wonder, myself. To wonder. To ask. And that in wondering bout the big things and asking bout the big things, you learn about the little ones, almost by accident. But you never know nothing more about the big things than you start out with. The more I wonder, he say, the more I love.”