Often, we trick ourselves into believing that if we add another feature to our lives, then we can be complete. That’s the industrial consumer mentality.
I wonder, however, what we do with less.
Less access to the internet, less TV and email subscriptions, less time on our phone, less commuting, less sitting around waiting, less talking, less junk food…
What could we do with that extra time and energy?
New year, new goals.
I imagine many people picking a goal to get into shape or to spend more time with a family.
Perhaps think about a goal with a new set of parameters.
Instead of engineering our lives to resemble a factory, perhaps the answer is to do less.
Our lives cannot resemble the hustle of industrialists, but too often, we think if we could make them as efficient as an assembly line, then our troubles would be over.
We think in terms of someone losing their temper and hitting someone. But violence comes in many forms. Psychological violence, physical violence, financial violence, spiritual violence…
When we enslave people into so much debt and anchor them to a job–how is that anything other than violence?
If the choice is to work or starve–how is that even a choice?
There are a lot of ways to contribute to a culture than just for a paycheck. In fact, there are many more valuable ways to spend our time. But that is something that isn’t even a topic of conversation in our culture today. Because it is assumed that you need a job to be productive. Yet, deep down, many of us know that to be productive doesn’t mean working a job.
It has nothing to do with money value or net worth.
I think one of the biggest lies we tell ourselves today in our culture is that we somehow convince ourselves that if we are not getting paid, then it isn’t valuable.
Money is a unit of measure with a bias toward flowing to those with it and to those who control the means of production.
You can work hard and make money. But it is also true (and far more likely) that you can work hard and not make very much.
Worth has nothing to do with the measure of money. Worth has everything to do with what you are doing to contribute to the community, or what you make, or who you help…so many ways to measure this instead of magical digits on a screen.
Most of us didn’t grow up dreaming we would be doing the type of work we do today. That’s because the work we do didn’t really exist just 30 years ago. That’s how fast we are changing. The work we finish our careers may not even exist yet either. Forget it for this rising generation.
So, we can look to hold on tight to what we know. Or we can be loose and move freely. Adapt.
Sisyphus was condemned to push a boulder up a mountain for all eternity. Once he got to the top, the boulder would just roll down, and he would have to start again.
Most of them read that and think, what a horrible hell.
But I think it is a metaphor for our lives. We all have a struggle. We all have a boulder. And when we reach the top, there is nothing to do but start over.
I think its an opportunity to reframe the adversity we find in this life. Accepting it as part of the human condition. The struggle is the struggle, but we get to define it. Not the absence of it.
Chuck Palahniuk, author of Fight Club, wrote, “On a long enough timeline, the survival rate for everyone drops to zero.”
I think that can be expanded to “everything.” Empires, cultures, traditions, and even ideas come and go. It is part of the life cycle.
And while that can seem depressing, it can also be a reminder that the things we are so frustrated with–well, they won’t last forever either.
If things were to stay the same, slavery would still be here. The point is that we can evolve and change. Sometimes for the better. Sometimes, for the worse. What’s constant is the change itself.
“If you could change one thing that would save hundreds of thousands of lives, would you do it?“
“Well, yeah?“
“Great.”
“Make it so cars cannot travel more than 10 miles per hour.”
If we were to do such a thing it would no doubt reduce the amount of accidents and save countless lives going forward. Except we all tolerate a certain level of risk. And for ours it’s a much higher speed limit.
We could change the fines and make mandatory jail time for breaking traffic laws but we don’t cause as a culture we decide that is not how we want to govern ourselves.
And it isn’t just with speed limits. It the same with mask wearing or the food industry.
We all allow a certain level of risk but if we go to extreme measures we would reduce the toll on life. But we don’t always value life the most in the decisions we make. Despite what we think.
They live in our imaginations.
Which means we can shape them to be all sorts of things.
But it also means they can carry around the biases and prejudices we carry too.
Is the one we give.
Because more stuff isn’t what we need.
What we need is the feeling of being connected.
And that cost nothing but our time and energy.
Josh Allred's Blog 