January 18th, 2021
You would think that because we’re not prehistoric people fighting for our daily survival that we wouldn’t be so stressed out.
But what humans did was change the definition of survival itself.
It is no longer just having shelter and something to eat and not dying.
It’s having a home that isn’t affordable for most people to own outright. It is always having reliable transportation. It is having clothes and accessories and makeup that somehow translate all of the things you are on the inside. It’s acquiring the most current technology. It’s acquiring a lot of material things, actually. It’s throwing parties and having weddings and preparing funerals for people whose costs while living haven’t even been paid in full yet.
And it’s, you know, not dying.
When we settled the original threats to existence, we just invented more and then built them up like skyscrapers. We created traditions and expectations and then dedicated every generation to come to kill themselves by living with them.
For me, panic mode, most of the time, starts when I am thinking about how I am going to keep all of this up. I find peace in the moments when I recognize that we make most of this shit up.
I don’t know who else needs to hear this today, but these thoughts help me when the sheer volume of materialism is suffocating.
If you have shelter, and something to eat, and are not dead: I see you. You survived in the most primal of ways today. And you are the stunning result of strong, beautiful human beings who did just that.
The Den 