It's important to not sell out, you know? To hold on to your values and ideas and not let dollar signs change or bend them. It's ironic really... to be a really good hippy, it helps to have a little coin backing you up, right? To purchase some land, to build an eco-friendly home, sow a sustainable garden, provide clothing and learning resources for your family and so on and so forth. Money money money.
We all sell out for the money, and then make justifications for it later - or at least I
Work 60 horrible hours a week and become a zombie to your family. Buy your consumables at Walmart instead of a locally owned shop to save that nickle. Feed the No Name and Great Value brands to your family and don't question why they're have the price of raw ingredients. Follow orders: Sell the turkey that's been mistakenly thawing at room temperature for 36 hours to unknowing customers.... just make sure it's cooked well, and by God, don't breath a word of it to anybody.
It's how we keep getting the ol' paycheck and stretch it as far as possible. I'm sacrificing this in order to get that, or I'm suffering now so my children won't have to later, or I'm looking the other way because if I don't see it it isn't really there it it ultimately saves me or makes me some money. But it is there. It's not right... it doesn't feel right. None of it. Saving and making money has a very high cost.
For too long now, I feel like I've been swimming against a current, trying to fit in with society... trying to have what society tells me I should want to have - kicking myself and regretting choices I made in the past that landed me so far away from societal 'norms'. I use the term 'norm' lightly, as I think there's far more people like me out there, than there are idyllic models of the Canadian Dream in Action.
I'm sure I'm a growing statistic of failed college student who defaulted on student loans which were then placed in collections in error, not corrected through ignorance and inaction, resulting in one or more bankruptcies and ultimately entrapment into the retail and service sector with little hope of finishing post secondary education, and thus obtaining the magical job with the six figure salary and key to the executive washroom. But who cares!?
Oh right, I do because I want to buy a farm. :S
I haven't been blogging much of value lately... just recipes and some photos. No real substance, because the substance has been cynical at best and depressing at it's low points. I'm tired of trying to be what I'm not. I'm fast becoming a crunchy attachment parenting hippy, and while my brain still tells me that I want a house in the east end with a big back yard, a cottage on the lake, and at least one suit valued at over $500.... my heart is screaming at me that I don't in fact want these things. Corporate western civilization wants me to want them... tells me to want them... has been drilling it into my head for 34 years that I need to have them at any and all costs.
I'm feeling a little more awake today. I'm not sure exactly where I'm going, except that it's certainly not where anybody is expecting or predicting based on an intense focus group.
This "What Not to Do Wednesday" has been brought to you by the letters, "wake up" and the number, "follow your heart".
/rant
I live right on the ragged edge of town, and the farms are a mere three minutes by bike. Two minutes if I'm really pushing it. Every time I head out into the hinterlands for a cruise - and sometimes past the Wal-Mart-Root-of-all-Evil that's two kms the other way - I ask myself if the urban lifestyle is really how I should be spending my time on this planet.
ReplyDeleteI never have an answer. So I keep pushing the pedals deeper into farm country as I mull over whether it'll ever be my time to make that fundamental change.
You've given me ample food for thought, Mark. (Nothing new, I know, but I wanted to thank you all the same.)