im sick of always going back and forth with feeling like there is something wrong with me. like i came off the assembly line flawed and defunct, yet i continue to stumble through life finding meaning in things i swear its not appropriate to find meaning in. honestly. why is it that i cant get myself to care about "making" my life into something. or should i say "making something of myself." to please whom?? im fine just enjoying the flow of life around me, i dont feel compelled to try and manage and control my life. or in other words, instead of living life, im much more drawn to letting life live through me.
this is why i turn into a fussy baby over the millions of bullshit things life consists of. i spent a large part of the afternoon today watching a show about parking officers who give tickets and tow vehicles all around the merry little streets of philadelphia. so people get ticketed and go to the parking authority center and bitch through a windowpane at the person on the other side who has to find all sorts of numbers and forms and yaddayaddayadda.
i dont even want a car--seriously in my abstract mind i just think about things like that, why do we even NEED a car, its just another thing to give you problems and another way to be tracked down. and i use the car thing as an example because i understand how a vehicle plays a huge role in experiencing life. but it is really true that the more crap you own, the more your crap owns you. i struggle with the concept of bureaucracy and how necessary it is when you have a population, of really any size. it makes sense that in order to treat everyone fairly and equally, there has to be a standardized system of order. this is supposed to reduce corruption and inequality, but does it really do that in America? or have we just gone off course and now deal with a system that thrives off of petty bullshit to make money? is it really fair that a father trying to take care of his one month old baby and can hardly afford diapers has to pay what would have been the money for diapers because he parked in a "no parking" zone? aren't we becoming ridiculous; and actually in our effort to be "fair" we are actually becoming more and more unfair...since we are failing to recognize that people are in fact, human. thats the biggest problem and probably the only one i have with the bureaucratic machines we see in all sectors of society, that they do not recognize the individual human being.
i cant help but see the industrial world we have built as utterly meaningless and pointless. i dont even want anything to do with it really...but what does this mean that i must go live in the forest and talk to myself and gather berries? no because thats pretty strange, and im not sure i would even enjoy that, because what i truly value in life is time spent with the ones i love around me, having a good time. its all this bullshit that gets in the way of those things. institutions and laws are all subjective, they are made up of the people who do the work, everyday people who love their families and friends too. yet these institutions and laws also have the ability to drastically interfere and change the way your life gets to go.
i cant be too overboard here because i have to accept that everything in life has positive and negative, and there is no use trying to live life trying to dodge the negative all the time. its just hard for me to find value when i see how pointless a lot of the things we do are in the big scheme of things. people waste their whole lives keeping busy, and acting out of their own fears. people build their lives around their fears; through only doing what is comfortable you are in some ways living out of fear. people spend their lives doing whatever it is to "get by."
too often family members judge me for sounding like i dont want to work i just want to float around in la la land. i know the value of hard work, i like to work, but only if i really feel like its meaningful to me. i guess this depends on what i decide to find meaning in, because yeah i work at a cash register at a garden center, but i guess i can look at things as i am helping people most often find flowers and decorations that bring them happiness at home, and people who come in looking for flowers to put at gravesites. there is human-ness buried somewhere in there, in between the opening and closing of the cash drawer.
moving into my dads house i know that i dont share the same views as family here, but its a learning lesson for me to not be so quick to speak but rather quick to understand. listening to the conversation at dinner tonight they managed to in discreet ways touch on a few subjects that irked me: mocking the religion of Islam, insinuating that the only "civilized" black man in our neighborhood is the one who lives behind us, and proclaiming how lovely meat is.
I know I still eat meat, but its because i dont seem to have the balls to not because i just dont even want to feel like i stick out. and thats entirely stupid. i go through periods where i seem to have the fight in me and when id rather just run away.
i understand why people in the U.S. do not have a kind view of Islamic culture and religion, but whether its mocking that or mocking Catholics, Christians, Jews, essentially its all the same mocking. its all the same disrespect for people who are different than you. same with racism, none of us know any of the other neighbors yet its acceptable to just decide that they are lesser people? intolerance continues to be passed on, in the smallest of ways, at dinner tables across the world.
but i had a moment of thought when the conversation revolved around different meat dishes my stepmom loves and grew up with....veal, which is the cruelest of meats, was one she spoke of particularly fondly. and i understood why that is the case, because its valued to her, its part of her family experience growing up in an Italian family, food is central to human connection. i do not discredit this in anyway, food is a sharing experience that brings everybody happiness. i know that my stepmom or my dad would not actually be keen on killing a baby cow, but when the meat is already chopped up and ready, then what the hell it tastes good right?
and i thought that all i can do is be the person i am, and not worry about what others are thinking, because every person's actions and being has a ripple effect on those around them. we cannot change anybody's minds, but we can change our own, and usually spark others to change their own as well.
its a slow process, but i think it is the most effective. i could have got everything riled up but i do believe it would wind up working against me, yet i struggle because the quieter i am, the more i am a part of the problem and not the solution, some may say. i suppose i have to work on the confronting thing when it comes to politics but thats the part of politics i loathe the most, the confrontational part. everyone's always in each others faces trying to tell them that "im right, you're wrong" and we know that it gets nowhere. id rather lead by quiet example. it requires a lot of patience and perseverance.