We as a human society missed the point of living. We miss the daily joy of play. We miss the work of building better communities. We missed the point of coming together to solve our problems as a whole. There is almost a utopian ideology that comes with community. But it always gets ruined from the top down. Greed and power take something that is a human good and use it for personal benefit. Extracting the value of the work as if they did an equivalent job to the whole. But that is the human way, one smart fucker at the top, gets all the spoils.
If success wasn’t based around money- the world would be a better place. All of the books we read that are meant to make us better wouldn’t be a pep-talk to go out there and make some money. Because the fact is money in this construct of the world is necessary for happiness. How you and I make our money also matters, but not to the detriment of living in abject poverty. Being an artist who has to work at the IRS doesn’t stop a person from being an artist. But to most it is the harsh reality that to live, being an artist, getting to express oneself isn’t a viable option. It doesn’t make them any less an artist. But it does hurt their ability to focus on making money to live. Their art isn’t enough to support their life.
Life- real life takes place around family, friends, community. If you write a book needs readers. If you have a problem, you need family to help solve it. If you are lonely, depressed, and need a shoulder a friend group helps. But most of us aren’t taught how to live a life of interdependence. We don’t know how to build relationships of mutual love, respect, and care. We stay in our own lane and imagine we have to figure everything out on our own. We put our heads down and work. We work until we can’t because we imagine if we just had enough money our problems would go away. When there are plenty of us whose real problem is focusing on money and not building the relationships around them. Those bonds used to be our retirement, our safety net. As a society, we have decided to pay others to care for us when we are old. Instead of being a privilege to care for a family member, we have to work, we cannot be burdened with caring for a loved one.
Money fucking matters. Being a billionaire doesn’t. Making enough not to worry about money, is a good enough goal. To do what you love and get paid for it, might not be the most realistic goal. To make enough money to do what you love is. To build skills and abilities to do the work you feel proud of is worth the Investment of time, energy, and money.
Life isn’t going to get easier. It doesn’t happen unless you do things to make it that way. You have to set the right priorities. You have to take actions that will echo into your future and in so doing it will get easier. Momentum is hard to build at first, but once it gets to a certain level you just have to ride the wave. Prioritize life giving actions. Even if it is getting better at the work you don’t love, but do to live.
Later Gator 🐊
Nino
Nino Olson 