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?