Life for Rent

Gosh I haven’t done this in such a long time. But as has always been the case, no news here is certainly good news everywhere else. My professional life couldn’t be any better. And I feel utterly fulfilled. That truly wonderful, and deeply rewarding feeling. Pure awesome personified.  

Life feels like it has just begun. I’m slowly settling down and into my new skin; all that has been for the past six years —the financial, emotional, mental and social trauma— was to prepare for this: this and the entirety of the four decades to come.

My future unfolding before me, my academic preparation complete, my career at its first steps. A stark comparison to the aimless, impulsive and perhaps down-right and aptly stupid undertakings of youth. Days without a sliver of responsibility. Days without thought. Days without maturity. Oh goodness how could one live like that for so many years?

I have entered into a new phase of life, one where it is expected of me to perform and thus conduct myself in ways that I have never done so before. And for this I get paid a sum of cash at the end of every month, where in time that sum would grow in size and prove to be substantial enough that I will be able to horde a ton of dough to… to, well, spend on whatever that fancy finds me.  

And so it becomes tremendously easy thus to get sucked into consumerism and the pursuit of ever greater wealth. That there would be no end in sight. That the growth of companies and markets and national GDPs and consequently, the expansion of humankind itself as a whole, is inevitable and inexorable. That we as a race and as a civilisation can continue to flourish unabated for ever.

But no.

Our treasured home is dying.  

Before this century is over, our little blue speck of celestial rock and water will be irrevocably damaged . The tipping point is already upon us. Yet day in and day out, we trudge along: wasteful, improvident, without a care in the world. We dream, and we do so lavishly. We live, we spend and we consume, but the only thing that we consume is our home. We are neither great nor beautiful. We are nothing but a cancer to this planet.  

It disgusts me to live in this filth of fat and unnecessary excess, this sickness and perverted attitude that there is always more beyond the horizon. New opportunities to exploit. New resources to pillage. New lands to conquer. New worlds to rule.  

But there aren’t any.

There isn’t even enough to sustain all of us in our present state of continued excess, much less another few billion people who will soon flick the switch and join us in our so-called first world civilisation —one of mindless twenty-four-seven consumption of any and every resource imaginable.  

When will we wake up and make that change? Buy that one less little unnecessary item. Live without that one less frivolous object. Make that one less journey. Shower that one less minute. Set that one little Celsius hotter. 

Do it regardless, if only because long-term happiness isn’t that extra ten thousand a month, nor is it that fortune worth multiples of a lifetime. Joy isn’t a giant two-ton automobile, nor a house filled to the brim with shiny shit. We need to learn to live a smaller footprint. Learn to live with less. Learn to live on needs. Just as now is and has been a fitting time for us to “grow up” as persons and individuals, so too is now a fitting time for us to collectively grow up as a race, for are we really nothing more than perverse lumps of dividing cells all gone wrong?  

Towers

Of late, the one thing I’ve learnt is that a successive stream of accomplishments can make a person over-confident. And most certainly arrogant.

Just so proud of all the fantastic feats that lay behind one’s path; a towering symbol of one’s sheer and utter greatness.


Success. We all yearn for success. We strive for it. Kill for it. Die for it. Yet success isn’t necessarily life-long, nor is it necessarily the be-all and end-all to all that we hold dear in our long odyssey through mortal existence. For the masses out there who trudge along their daily lives, inconsequential to the eyes of the great and mighty, just the simplest of pleasures might just as well suffice. And so what if a ten-cent cuppa coffee can bring to someone as much as what it would take a million-dollar Rolls to do for another?

I am reminded to what an elder once shared with me, this one little nougat: just as quickly as life could turn for the better, fortunes could just as suddenly turn for the worst; life is long, its course circumstantial, and its bearing unpredictable.

But perhaps even not. Maybe one could be rock solid after all, having had it all nipped in the bud. Gotten everything nailed to the last detail. Maybe one is invincible, and truly untouchable.

All the same, there is ultimately a price to be paid. Most would lose their humility. Likely first to go would be one’s humanity —which is perhaps the one quality we should hold on to most dearly, for what are we without warmth and compassion?

Animals...


What must it feel like to be worth well over half a billion? What would it be like to be worth that amount, and see your life-long friends, comrades and the ones you treasure most struggle even to meet ends meet? Just what must it feel like to be filthy rich and not lift a finger for anyone?

What must it be like to be great and successful if you haven’t a trace of your soul left at the end of that line?


Regardless of where you go or where you're from, joy and fulfilment are universal and fundamentally the same for the haves and the have-nots. Those of us wealthy of accomplishment or cash may certainly be arrogant and overbearing, but remember that life is long and winding, and one might never know if someday you find yourself out in the city streets, without a home, without a living, without a life, and without even a sliver of your humanity left.