Joe,
I often find myself wondering if there is some underlying purpose, maybe unacknowledged, but it's there as a bonus nonetheless for people who can see and use it. I keep hearing from business, school, and others the rather testy mantra: "We are a competitive society." So, we have "things" as trophies, counters in the game to show who's on top and who's on the bottom. Are you the first to own the Super Duper Fartbox Five model, or must you make do with last year's mere Super model as you are lower on the social food chain? Is it the fact that you actually need the item or is it a badge to show who and what you are? Does this "competitiveness" actually increase quality or merely keep the workers busy, ensure that they never link up for any common cause? Keep them scratching gravel with all the yard birds and out of the way?
Stuff and how it relates to us. The hints are all there. When I was a kid I spent some time in Ethiopia, and some of us spent some time with some of the indigenous people. One of the men where we were staying admired one boy's shorts, and these were given to the man as a gift. They were short on Robert Hall clothing stores in the Afar Mountains, so they were treasured by this man. The first thing he did was cut the pockets out of them and sew the pocket access shut. We asked why. He said it was a great gift but he was a poor man and couldn't afford pockets. People with pockets had to acquire the proper things with which to fill them.
I thought that was an amusing idea then, but I was just a kid. The man possessed an insight which I now find almost staggering.
I'm on fixed income from the Veterans Administration, crippled, but we eat well and don't miss out on much of what we want to do or see. At my father's funeral, a man who had been a friend of my parents (church member, etc.) whom I hadn't seen since 1965 (this was 1998) came over to me and looked at me then asked, "Are you happy?" Although my father had made it clear for years that he felt me to be a waste of protein and a gargantuan disappointment, that was between me and him, and he was a good man where it counted, he gave more than he took in life no matter what we thought personally. He would not be so charitable to me, but that was him.
Anyway, this man asked me that, and I replied no, even though we weren't close, I was burying him and I wasn't happy about it. He said he meant with my life. I figured that I've had ups and downs, but in the end, yes, I was happy. He looked almost horrified, said, "How can you possibly be happy?" and went on to enumerate reasons why I shouldn't be. No profession, no education, no religion, no money, no social position, chronic illness, chronic pain, no God. How could I be happy?
I was about to reply when it became apparent that it wasn't about me, really. His son who I'd known back then (not well, though) is a doctor in North Carolina. Went down in the 70's, as incentive was given a farm, pieces of businesses, and became a "medibusinessman". He just couldn't understand how such a person as I could lack so much and have the same wife for thirty years and my sons were obviously good, dependable, solid men. His son was a multi-millionaire, sat high in the councils of the Southern Baptists, was at the top of his profession, and what he didn't own a piece of in North Carolina wasn't worth too much, and why wasn't he happy? Why was he getting a divorce from yet another wife (I think this was the fourth one) and why were the kids people that he didn't even want to be seen with, even if the little snobs would actually would be seen in his presence? How could I be happy with my life and this man not? How was it even possible? Well, I know how much worse it could be, and I was lucky in my spousal choice. But I had something that his son was missing, and he couldn't understand it, couldn't see it as fair. His son had made the right gestures, pulled the right levers, pushed the right buttons, how could things be wrong?
I had occasion to think on it last year. In May I had a stroke (luckily mild) and in August I was run over by a car. It hit me in both cases that I had an awful lot to lose, not "stuff" related, but mobility, things I did, people I was with, interactions, books, thoughts, even. It hit me I had a lot to lose because I had so much in the first place.
Bob
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Bob,
You always get me where I live. There is no way I can add to or comment upon such a perfect observation.
In art and labor,
Joe
