Be Fascinated
Why should I? Why should we as people? Is it really worth it?
It’s human to be fascinated with material things, similar to a fish going for a shiny lure. He sees it, bites it, then is ripped out of his home and filleted; all for the sake of fascination. Dumb Fish? Yeah, but here’s something dumber. I once read that if you drill a hole in a log with a hollow center, and drop a ball of tinfoil in there a raccoon will reach in and grab it, and he wont let go. You can come by 10 hours later and grab him. He won’t let go. Dumb raccoon. Once again, for the sake of fascination. So what separates us from these dumb animals? Well, we have taken being dumb to a refined level. We are the dumbest and numbest creatures alive. I use the word numb because our lives are disproportioned and disassociated. We have taken the pursuit of material too far.
A few days ago I rolled out of bed tired, completely exhausted from working late the night before. As I made it outside to my car and rounded the corner to begin my wait at the stoplight I saw a squirrel. He bobbed his head happily as he foraged for breakfast. I sipped my coffee watching him with envy and wishing that I had allotted the time he had for breakfast. The squirrel knows what life is about: Food, Clothing (fur in his case), shelter, and reproduction. He spends his day satisfying his hunger, looking for potential mates, keeping his coat clean, and locating the best tree for his family to live in. Ignorance is bliss. I spend my day satisfying an induced hunger for knowledge, wealth and success, not having enough time to look at girls, trying to keep my clothes clean and earning money to pay for rent. The problem is that my hunger is never quenched; I don’t have time to talk to the girls I see, I always get something on my tie, and no matter how much I pay rent this place isn’t mine. So who is the fool?
Yes, my mind is able to process ideas, thoughts and emotions on a higher level than that of the squirrels. But his philosophy of life is much more instinctual. It’s honed to a degree of simplicity that we cannot understand. The squirrel doesn’t preoccupy himself with such preposterous complexities. The only laws he is governed by are the laws of nature. Sun goes up, sun goes down. Weather is hot, weather is cold. Rain falls, wind blows. These are things that no living organism can change, and along with them comes death. If there’s one thing human advancement has brought, its longer life expectancy. But don’t ever expect technology to surpass death. Death is a natural occurrence that’s more organic and true to its value than any possession you could ever hope to own.
The important things in life don’t need interpretation or explanation of their value. They exist because they’re real and there are no ways to change them. Big houses, pools and leather chairs are nice but they do not have a true, universal value. No worth except that of which the buyer is willing to pay. Do you think we were created to be a slave of supply and demand? Paying exorbitant prices for what others think are chic and of value.? Absolutely not! We’re slobbering canines chasing a red ball. The reason is preoccupation, or as we call it “life”. The longer we extend our lives, the more time there is to be filled.
End life next week? No way. Life is too precious and short, you say. There’s so much to be done, so much more life to be lived. And how do we go about living this ever so precious life? By spending over two-thirds of it working and sleeping. And the other one-third is overshadowed by thoughts of what we need next and why we need more money.
If there is a devil, he’s laughing. He’s laughing because he got his way, and he’s done it without us knowing. He has robbed our true meaning of life and he didn’t do it by means of extortion or coercion. We’ve handed it to him with a smile on our face and our only excuse is this pesky quality of ours, intelligence. So we’re dumb because of intelligence? That makes no sense; it’s a contradiction like everything else in life. Fascination and the ideology of furthering the mind have brought us further away from discovering the beauty of our existence. No matter how far we think we’ve progressed we can’t accurately predict weather, stop death, explain how we got here, or figure out who’s in charge. And we never will because we’ve regressed rather than progressed. Yes, it’s human to folly. But this is a major screw up and I don’t see a way to turn it around by myself.
So, the day many of you thought you’d never see has come. Jon is a minimalist. Everyone stop and smell the roses! Jon’s a Minimalist!, though in spirit not practice. I’m still going to pursue my quest for success and hopefully one day I will have amassed a wealth so great that I can have a huge garden to frolic and forage in, free from the woes of civilization. It’s going to take me awhile to figure out how to do this, guess I’ll have to stop tomorrow morning and ask the squirrel for some help.
