Philosophical lunch

Life is weird.

Yesterday I went to lunch with my awesome daughter.  Maybe I should explain said awesome daughter first.  I freakin' LOVE her mind!!  And the way she thinks.  Maybe this picture will explain it, one day I asked her to pose for a picture, this is what I got:

Yeah...  so anyways, we are talking at lunch and our brains are churning with how things are messed up with the general way of thinking and how people just blindly follow it.  One thought spins off to another with us and it builds steam and I woke up this morning thinking about life.

Like I said before, the typical thinking is for people to be born, they are brainwashed then into this 'This is how it is done' mentality of:  go to school, go to more school for which you will have lots of student loans that will follow you forever, to get a degree for something you may or may not like that you might have been forced to pick at 18 years old, so you can get a non-secure job that no longer lasts for 40 years, that hopefully gives you benefits that are dwindling ever so quickly, so you are deemed worthy enough to get married and have 2.1 kids, so you can buy a house, but before you buy a house you must have 'good credit', the way to get said credit is to borrow money, and more money, and slave at said job that you maybe liked before but now start to resent because all you do is work there to make payments, then your 'good credit' is built up so now you can buy a house, because that is what you are supposed to do right? and then the magic is gone and you probably hate your job but you can't quit it because you have so many payments and a spouse and 2.1 kids and an SUV and probably 2 more cars parked in the driveway, and you live for the weekends yet you waste it working on the house, which has trapped you and taken your free time, and you spend your whole year dreaming of your two weeks off a year (if you are lucky, paid if you are even luckier), to go to a tourist trap place and wrack up more debt with more payments that you didn't enjoy to begin with, and keep having to get up and go every 5 days a week to a place that you now hate to pay for things that you resent, and have to keep working on stuff on the house, just to keep on this "I am normal" face, and it stresses you out, you are stressed about the economy, your job security, braces, ER visits, bill collectors, and you try to escape the awfulness of it all by drowning yourself in TV at night, because at least you can dream you live like the people in that boob tube, and you aren't happy because you can not be like those people in the boob tube, because they have things you don't and they look happy, so you get those things so you can be happy, you add more payments, you are always working on the house or yard to impress the neighbors, you buy something else, add more stress, your health suffers, you buy bigger house, bigger car, bigger payments, you drink or pop anxiety or depression pills to numb it, you play video games or start over eating or have a gambling habit or a porn addiction, cash out your retirement to pay off credit cards, your marriage suffers, you don't spend any times with your 2.1 kids, more odds are in favor of you getting a divorce than staying married, your job suffers, you take out a second mortgage to again pay off credit cards, and your health keeps suffering, you buy stuff to make you happy, it doesn't, so you buy more stuff, and you are still not happy, the cycle, over and over, day after day...   on a hamster wheel     FOR 40 FUCKING YEARS.

At the end of which, if you are lucky enough to have saved over the years you might have a retirement fund, enough to live on, that hopefully will keep up with your medical conditions that were brought on over 40 years of unhappiness, stress, over weight, addiction, depression, and then you don't know what to do because you don't know what makes YOU happy, you never did, you were only programmed to think that the above prescription for life was supposed to make you happy, yet you knew it didn't, so you keep thinking you are supposed to buy stuff in retirement or go to preprogrammed tourist places and it will make you happy, and it still doesn't, your life consists of going to the doctor, when people ask how you are you give them a list of your ailments, and your retirement fund isn't keeping up with the medical or the stuff buying and you are still not happy.

Why?

Who said this is how it is supposed to be?

So my daughter and I sat there and we discussed this.  We do that, by the way, we like to ask 'Why?'.  On just about everything. 

How about a different prescription to the above scenario?

What if?   What if you instead took that 40 years of your 'earning potential' and said to hell with it, and did what you wanted to?  To hell with what everyone says your are supposed to be doing.  Be a cellist, make jewelry, backpack around Europe, take off on a sailboat, whatever.  To hell with being able to afford it, figure it out as you go along.  You are happy.  You figure out for those 40 years that it's not things that make you happy, but it's you.  The stress is over come by the joy of doing what you know is right for you.  You smile.  The people around you feel it.  You have experiences.  You learn to live on less and thrive on it.  You don't need a lot.  You aren't tied down.  You don't have a conventional 9-5 job, you are flexible.  Your health is better since you are in motion, in your body and your heart.  You have taken the years when you are in your best health and got to live those 40 years. 

And when you get to retirement age, you probably don't have a retirement fund.  And?  You have learned to live on less, your needs aren't much.  You might want to settle in one place for a while after 40 years of living it up, so you rent a cheap place.  Your bones aren't what they used to be but that is okay, you had 40 years of fun times.  You might have to work a low paying steady job now, but that is okay because you like people and think they are interesting to talk to.  You are interesting to talk to.  Since your needs are small, part time is okay.  Which means you still have time to get to do your fun things.  Your bones are gonna hurt now regardless, better to have 40 years of fun under your belt rather than wait 40 years and be hurting to finally get to do what you wanted to.  You don't have 40 years of stress under your belt so you health is probably good, you are still active.  You are still smiling.  Stuff still doesn't make you happy, you do that yourself. 

I read something like this "It is better to learn to live on less than to work enough to not have to".  Could mean the same as it is better to learn to be happy with less than to spend your whole life working searching for happiness.

Are people really just living in The Matrix?  We are plugged into the consumer machine, our whole reason for being is just to spend money, so like good little soldiers we go to jobs we hate so we can spend so The Matrix just gets richer?  Maybe I am Neo..    feeling something is just not right.  Morpheus!!  Come get me!!

#AntiConsmerist  #AmericanNightmare