No One Asks The Rat...
I keep rats as pets. I have had other pets but those don't really work out. Rats are low maintenance, with the benefit of being pack animals, so they are affectionate. The down side is that they die pretty easily and frequently. I lost a little albino called Fermi recently, and if I go on with this anecdote it will be a pretty good setup to talk about impermanence. That's not what I have on my mind though.
I can't help but notice a certain link between keeping a pet, like say a rat, and what the role of the structure that is society is to the individual. I keep Feynman, my surviving rat, safe. I feed him. I keep him from doing destructive things that will make me reject him, like munching on my computer cables. I have created a structure for him to the best of my ability, that I feel is best for him. I haven't asked him if his happy, because that would be absurd.
If I had more rats to manage, say seven billion, my ability to tend to any individual need would be stunted somewhat, yet I would still attempt to create some sort of order. I still wouldn't ask.
Don't misunderstand, I am not promoting the idea that there is an individual or group that plays my counterpart as rat keeper in the world of human civilization. It doesn't matter if there is or not. What there is is society. A construct that assumes it is the best possible way for humans to function.
I feel like I am playing devil's advocate here, in justifying the existence of a system that rejects the potential desires of the individual in the name of over-all structure. I don't mean to. It just is what it is. It is when we turn against a thing that we must demonize it, and that too, is fine.
We should probably just figure out this one pivotal thing for ourselves. Is this for me? Does this cage of generalization allow me to be happy in any way? Unfortunately, when any system tries to cater to all, it tends to fail across the board. A lot of us cannot function in this system. We don't want that life. Then we do it anyway. Why? Because these notions are ingrained in us. We get taught this stuff from day one. And that training results in a very powerful counter trigger.
Guilt
If you aren't succeeding financially at something, odds are you feel pretty down about yourself. Have you stopped and asked yourself if it actually matters to you? Maybe you are unhappy because that's someone else's dream you have hammered into your head. You don't lie in bed before you go to sleep fantasizing about that corner office and all the mind numbing junk you will be doing in it.
Perhaps you do think about stuff you would buy with the money you would make, if so, newsflash, you want the stuff, not the job. You could probably come up with ways that would make you happy and facilitate the purchasing of pointless fun junk.
You simply do not need to do it.
1. First you are going to have to fight yourself on this. You try telling yourself you don't want to work a stupid job and raise some kids with some person and buy non-stick pots, you will find a very angry person in the mirror. Its not because you actually really believe you want those sort of things, its because those things are the only parameters you have been thought to determine whether or not you are a failure.
2. Next you are going to have to put up with other people (Note, put up with, not fight with, that would be a lost battle). There are many ways we could look at this, but primarily it boils down to a couple of steps you would go through, that would both infuriate other people.
A) When you tell people that you aren't going to do things that way, that you are going to give creating your own life a go, they are going to tell you you are stupid, that life doesn't work like that, that you have your head in the clouds and in the real world blah blah blah. It annoys me just typing that, but people will try to undermine you and characterize you as a lunatic, and a washout. They will not do this because they are right, or because they are deliberately jerks. They do this because this invokes that guilt trigger, and in all likelihood, that guilt is all that's keeping their own lie together.
B) Then should you succeed to create some sort of life that you defined, people are going to be pissed off. Don't get mad, you have just subverted everything they have slaved away for under the misguided understanding that that was their only option. You have literally one-upped everything they feel they are. Anyone in that situation probably has the right to be mad. Not at you, but just to be mad, let them take it out on you if they like, once again, it doesn't matter.
3) The third thing you are going to have to deal with is that because we are so programmed to feel this guilt and accept that this is the life we must lead, it's not easy to make any changes. This is where a bit of self destruction comes into play. As with all things, self destructive behavior is a misunderstood creature. At the right time, it can often be exactly what you needed. I can't really elaborate much on this, we all have our own ways of doing it, but the formula goes something like 'Start sinking, do some stupid things, explode and destroy everything in sight, slowly recover, build anew'.
If you survive these things, and odds are that save being thrown off a building by angry estate agent sympathizers, or hit by some other bizarre quirky misfortune I am too tired to come up with right now, you will, then there is a chance you will have a life you can live, and that you actually want to live. On the other hand it may also fail, that's life, be realistic, but then you can try again. It may only be me, but I would rather keep busy trying to build a happy life for myself and fail a couple of times than give up and just settle for misery. All we really want is to be happy.
I am going to end this post with something that came up in a conversation earlier tonight. There will always be problems and worries, but at least the future could hold new problems, rather than these same old draining ones. Problems that you might have the passion to solve if you are happy.
Time to put my rat back in his cage. Sometime I should probably ask him what he wants.
Thanks for reading.
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