It's been a few days. Not having the 'normal' culturally accepted rhythms to bookend the days really do affect my ability to develop a daily writing routine. One of the taken-for-granted things about a 9–5 is the predictability it bakes into our lives. The drawback, of course, is the way everything quickly becomes mundane, repetitive, tedious. Those pockets of free time are relegated to very early morning, evenings and, if you're lucky, weekends. For those of you with jobs that do not provide two consecutive days off, this limiting aspect of your work schedule may be even more apparent. But we adapt to the confines of our work schedules and grow resentful of the hours during which we are not 'free.' We clamor and pray for a Friday to come racing around as we trudge through the monotony of the work week to offer us a small reprieve from our often meaningless, corrosive labor. At some point many of us will invariably ask, "why do we need jobs?" Who came up with that idea? Certainly not anyone who valued stillness, natural cycles, or the importance of novelty and variance.
Even as I write that, the paradox jumps out at me. It could be argued that it was exactly those people who valued stillness, novelty and variance who brought us the atrocity we call 'work.' Perhaps they loved these things a little too much. They became willing, at least ostensibly, to subjugate their fellow humans into long hours of servitude, indignation, and worrisome postures of exploitation to achieve their goals. And while the conditions for the average person living in the global north have increased considerably—many of us living more lavish and luxurious lifestyles than that of ancient kings—though a terrible price has been paid. We are hollow. Empty. Lacking meaning, purpose, or real community. People in the global south, and many also in the north, have been taken advantage of, robbed, killed, or worse, converted. Colonialism, the great soul sickness that defines our modern period, has, in its profligate madness, rendered the world—and us in it—as commodities. Everything is for sale. Everything is there for the taking. And nearly everything has been taken: the old stories, the old ways, the old songs, rituals, beliefs and ways of life. All obliterated by Western imperialism and post-Enlightenment thinking which claim these ancient ways were ignoble, savage, 'uneducated' and superstitious ways of understanding the world.
A quite unanticipated consequence of wanting a little more leisure time, comfort, and safety, don't you think?
And therein lies the problem with taking things to their extreme. Few among us could claim that leisure, comfort and safety are wicked attributes. Cousins of peace, these are natural to wish for, even to yearn for. Back during a time when our lives were much more precarious, perhaps short (though this is unproven), more susceptible to scarcity, famine, disease, and predation, we rightly feared our fate. Who wouldn't want more control and protection from the unlimited power of the Gods all around us? Like all things, however, there needs to be proper balance. As one species gains greater leverage over another, that other species then becomes prey to all of the burdens that the first species sought to offload—taking the system out of balance; hunting megafauna to extinction; clearing ancient old-growth forests of their vitality; polluting our waterways, where countless creatures (and also our ancestors) call home; bringing about the sixth mass extinction event in the Earth's history. In time, that species which continues to disrespect the natural order of things digs itself deeper and deeper into a hole it cannot climb out of. Nature, it seems, will allow this, as an easy and organic solution to the problem, and let the species self-destruct.
The interesting part, at least to me, is that at every moment we have the power to pick another path. Each passing second is another chance to turn it all around and walk into a new story. Yet we so desperately cling to the broken stories we know best. The ones which continue to hollow us out and leave us despondent, despairing and dejected. Weird creatures, humans. For all our ingenuity, genius, imagination and altruism, we're foolish lot. Prone to pettiness, anger, hatred, wrath and also grapes. The fermented kind. Preferring always bread and circuses to responsibility and discipline. Perpetual adolescents. During travels I've met some people you might consider adults. Often these people are older, but not always. If this pattern is true from the timescale of a human life, perhaps it's also true on a civilizational timeline. We are living through a collective rite of passage where we are facing an initiation that will ferry us across the river into adulthood. Perhaps we're simply at a time where we need more time to grow up. It's plausible we are in the midst of a painful growth spurt, with dire consequences for the world around us. Young adults making disastrous and poor decision that will haunt us for many, many years to come but which may gift us blessings of virtue and wisdom in the future. Mistakes are how we learn. Not only can they not be avoided, but they shouldn't be. Mistakes are how we learn.
The deepest mistakes offer the deepest learning.
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