Amazed

I get down. Every so often I get a little down. It’s fairly scary at first because I’ve been really down at times in my life. When I start to get that down feeling I fear it is the beginning of that road into the darkness. Often this feeling is due to an imbalance in my life. A stress that is being caused by the domination of one reality over the other.

If I lean too far to my practical side I find myself trying to level-up. I look for pathways to increase our family wealth. If I lean too far to the other side I start playing too much music and begin seriously contemplating dropping out of society, liquidating everything, and starting anew on a commune or as a homesteader.

They each have the ability to capture me at times. As of late I’ve been able to balance the two quite well into a nice little life. But there were some dark days in the past. From time to time that surface level sadness spawns that fear. Although, these occurrences have seemed more manageable in the recent past.

Perhaps what has changed in recent times is my amazement of it ALL. When I feel that imbalance creeping in then I try to pull myself to center by reminding myself what a weird thing this life is, and how lucky I am to experience it. Even the shitty parts.

Hurtling through space on a spherical stone with a burning ball of fire at its center. A stone covered in increasingly smaller, cooling rocks. And on the surface are rocks that have become dust so that they act like a sponge that absorb water. In that water and dust mixture green things grow that eat sunlight and provide nourishment for everything else.

Somehow there is this formation of molecules named Billy Swart that gets to experience whatever this is. I mean if you are reading this then you are also that guy/gal/person. Now sometimes things are going to suck and be stressful in life. Finding your necessities requires certain levels of imbalance-caused stress. Jobs are stressful. Moving is stressful. Starting relationships is stressful. Ending relationships is stressful. But there is a lot of self-inflicted stress that seems to come from an imbalance of value.

A common theme in these writings is the concept of contentment or contentedness. It is a foreign concept in the America that I know. I’ve lived in this society for my entire life and nearly everything in this society pushes you to believe that you need more not less. You should always be striving for what is next. If you can afford a nice car then you should be striving to get the luxury car. If you own a 50-inch television then you should be striving for the 60-inch. If your current digs are 1500 square-foot on a quarter-acre then you should be striving for 2500 square-foot on 2-acres.

Most people of my generation that have lived in this culture have only been exposed to the idea of leveling-up. And at every turn there is a company ready to sell you that next level of American experience. Luxury goods and services go as far as the human imagination can take them. It seems to be good business. Why try to provide necessities to people at razor thin margins while hoping you get the volume to make the numbers work? Why not just sell a few luxury goods to a few people with huge margins based solely on that product’s prestige or exclusivity?

If you wish to continue on that treadmill then there will almost assuredly be someone there at every step ready to accommodate your desires. However, if you wish to get off the treadmill then all you have to do is start living with a default sense of abundance as opposed to scarcity. Choose to be amazed by this bizarre rock in space as opposed to perceiving it as merely a grounds for extraction.

One needn’t drop-out of society. That is certainly not what I am advocating, if indeed I’m advocating anything at all. What this piece is about is being grateful for what we already have surrounding us. Even if it seems like you have nothing at all in comparison to your neighbor, co-worker, friends, spouse’s friends, etc. What you do have is a brief existence. It is ever so brief and it is beyond weird. It is also against all odds that you are here to experience it. I won’t pretend to try to give that any more meaning than it already has. I’m not sure what you should do with your time or energy, but I can say that you should be amazed by it.

If you are not amazed by this then you have been captured by the worst of our society. It is very easy to do. The forests are just something we use for lumber or need cleared for grazing livestock. The oceans and rivers are just means of easy conveyance for the transport of goods. The soil is only an obstacle between us and the precious minerals and potential energy sources resting below. The air is simply a place to vent the fumes that we don’t want to keep inside of doors.

Actually all of those are the sacred spaces and what we hold in high-esteem is largely of little value. We need certain things to survive, and there are certain things that we want that increase the enjoyment of our brief experience here in this realm. Beyond those things it is all a game of cohesion and manipulation. I’m not judging anyone that ignores the forests, waters, ground, or air for a preference for the artificial. I lived oblivious to those things for so many years – preferring instead to be captured by what the ‘advanced’ world was telling me had value.

Go for a walk in your neighborhood. Hike your nearest trail. Float your nearest stream, or at least go stick your toes in some water. Find some clean air and breath it deep. Take a long look at the next green thing coming out of the soil. All of this should be amazing to us because the odds of any of us experiencing it as a sentient being are astronomically low, and yet here we are. Allow yourself to be amazed.

I appreciate your attention and hope you’ve found value in this.
Thanks for reading and take care of each other.