Real Talk about Materialism
Materialism: ism. anything I can use as an excuse not to be free in my life
You and I both know that the first moments of the morning are the hardest part of the day. These are the moments when any fleeting dreams make their generative absence felt, and the hardened concepts of a lifetime come crashing in to settle on the disappointed heart.
It's an emotional moment. However, if you are anything like me, you learned along with your first words that this is not a time to feel into experience. This is a time to jump out of bed and beat back against the aches and pains of existence by gulping down hot eggs and outracing your best time to work in someone else's company, to serve the ideals of someone more powerful, who knows more, and deserves your lifetime more than you do.
In a way, it's a miracle that anyone taught up in a society so married to habit as I believe ours is could come to question this behavior at all. It seems so normal, and normal is king. What's also shown itself to be normal in this status quo is suicide, and I'm not only talking about the killing of the body. In fact, I believe that the body may be the last to go.
What regular people don't get about materialism is that it's not only about buying too many products and not realizing that money can't buy happiness. These are merely the final results of materialism. What comes before is a litany of thoughts, beliefs, identities, memories and goals without which we fear we won't be able to define who we are. Yet the only security these mental structures offer is the prolongation of the perceived need for them.
Fortunately, getting to the heart essence of one's true identity does not require abandoning uniqueness or self-expression. On the contrary, self expression is freed completely when the material world and its thoughts are taken at face value and treated as beautiful illusions, no more trustworthy than soap bubbles.
What about all that angst and guilt about not being able to fix your parents' worlds, which is what's gotten you out of bed in the morning for the past 25 years? It's a friend who has loved you into making an effort to improve your life. But now is not the time for persevering in impossible tasks for malcontents. Now is the time for discovering that one's own happiness is the source of the happiness of others, and if it helps settle your mind at all, seeking one's own happiness is just as much of a pain in the ass as trying to learn how to make someone else happy. The only difference is, instead of constantly dreading the likelihood that you'll never being able to succeed at the one, now you could really (really!) have a chance of succeeding at both.
You and I both know that the first moments of the morning are the hardest part of the day. These are the moments when any fleeting dreams make their generative absence felt, and the hardened concepts of a lifetime come crashing in to settle on the disappointed heart.
It's an emotional moment. However, if you are anything like me, you learned along with your first words that this is not a time to feel into experience. This is a time to jump out of bed and beat back against the aches and pains of existence by gulping down hot eggs and outracing your best time to work in someone else's company, to serve the ideals of someone more powerful, who knows more, and deserves your lifetime more than you do.
In a way, it's a miracle that anyone taught up in a society so married to habit as I believe ours is could come to question this behavior at all. It seems so normal, and normal is king. What's also shown itself to be normal in this status quo is suicide, and I'm not only talking about the killing of the body. In fact, I believe that the body may be the last to go.
What regular people don't get about materialism is that it's not only about buying too many products and not realizing that money can't buy happiness. These are merely the final results of materialism. What comes before is a litany of thoughts, beliefs, identities, memories and goals without which we fear we won't be able to define who we are. Yet the only security these mental structures offer is the prolongation of the perceived need for them.
Fortunately, getting to the heart essence of one's true identity does not require abandoning uniqueness or self-expression. On the contrary, self expression is freed completely when the material world and its thoughts are taken at face value and treated as beautiful illusions, no more trustworthy than soap bubbles.
What about all that angst and guilt about not being able to fix your parents' worlds, which is what's gotten you out of bed in the morning for the past 25 years? It's a friend who has loved you into making an effort to improve your life. But now is not the time for persevering in impossible tasks for malcontents. Now is the time for discovering that one's own happiness is the source of the happiness of others, and if it helps settle your mind at all, seeking one's own happiness is just as much of a pain in the ass as trying to learn how to make someone else happy. The only difference is, instead of constantly dreading the likelihood that you'll never being able to succeed at the one, now you could really (really!) have a chance of succeeding at both.
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