Thursday, June 14, 2018

The Restless Life


"The answer is there.  The answer is there.  But there is not a fixed position."
 -Fugazi,  Long Distance Runner


Have you ever been content?  Looked around and felt like this was all you need and want?  Was it a good feeling?  Did it last?  Could this be called happiness?  Are they the same thing?

The recent celebrity suicides got me thinking about these concepts of happiness, contentment and restlessness.  Many of us common struggling folk might give our eye teeth to be where those two were, but such dissatisfaction and hopelessness existed in them to choose extreme, final solutions.  Yet, the statistics show suicide rates are on the rise in all demographics.  From a pragmatic viewpoint it can be said that none of us asked to go on this ride, why should anyone be forced to continue if they don't wish to?  Hackneyed cliches (e.g. "Life is worth living.") aside, such a scant minority of life's choices are actually our own, choosing the time and manner of one's demise might just be among the few.

Always present is a great, unrelenting push from advertisers to make sure that no one is happy or content with what they have or who they are.  If everyone woke up tomorrow and decided not to buy anything non-essential there would be chaos among the Madison Avenue types and corporate mucky-mucks.  Plastic surgeons would go out of business, cosmetic companies bankrupt, therapists and psychologists panhandling, indeed much of the glittery fake fabric interwoven with the cloth we call America would fall to dust.  Not going to happen, but still something to ponder...

And the restlessness persists.  Perhaps a human genetic predisposition, for surely without it man never would have crossed the oceans or hurled himself into the heavens.  For some this discontent is a great motivator, for the troubled it may be a final straw under which our camel collapses.

The happy are not immune either.  'Tis but a short drive from content to complacent, and oft is one mistaken for the other.  Doubtless it's double-edged.  Complacency corrodes, depresses, and destroys.  It is also a very easy thing, thus all the more treacherous.

I'm sure I don't have any answers.  Just keep the wheels turning.  Or else Death might catch you.

Give Him a run for his money...





 



 


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