Round and round it goes, here does it stop? Nobody knows. Where does this endless quest for more end? Why is it that there is always something more to be done? When are we content to enjoy the moment? We laugh at a dog chasing its tail, but I am beginning to think the dog is trying to tell us something about ourselves. I think perhaps the dog is simply pointing out how silly most of us are. We are bombarded with urgent requirements from every direction at once. We sort through our daily list of chores checking off the ones we complete and pushing the ones we don't onto the next day. We fill our days up with empty tasks, we are driving down the highway at breakneck speed with the proverbial "carrot on a stick" dangling before us and while a part of us truly knows we will never get "the prize" we cannot get off the road, too often we're too busy making phone calls or flipping some other driver off to see the exit sign. What is so dreadfully important that we cannot put our lives on "pause"? What is it we think we'll miss if we put the car in neutral and just coast a little? What is it about the destination that makes the journey so insignificant?
We are trapped in a world of illusion. We are hooked into a tremendous "system" of tasks, things, money, and reliance. We couldn't disconnect from it if we tried. Our entire sense of purpose is tied up in it somehow. We spend so much time contemplating our next move that we hardly notice that little warning light in the back of our head telling us something isn't quite right, that something is out of sync. Many of us have gotten to the point where we don't even notice it anymore. We are so hopelessly dependent on this system that we go to psychiatrists for pills and psychologists to tell us we're actually okay. One of the reasons so many go to church is because we seek an external source of solace; we seek that moment of peace that we feel only a brush with the mystical can provide us. We don't really know what it is we seek, so we're grateful that a "ready made" path of religious study has been mapped out for us, we just follow the simple instructions and all is forgiven. Momentarily, we're relieved and it is enough to get us hooked back into the rat race again.
Many need that "weekly booster" to keep going, we are after all, supposed to be consumers, aren't we? We consume too much and expend so much, it is as the world of computer programming has taught us GIGO, or Garbage In, Garbage Out. We are essentially "programmed" to want things we don't need, to buy things we don't have because commercialism is geared to tell us how inadequate we really are. How much more sexy we'd be if we had this product or drove this car. How much more everyone will view us as "with it" if we only take this course, or send away for our free instruction video.
In a word, BULLSHIT. We have all bought into a system that has enslaved us. We are taught to think that money, achievement ,and success are more important than happiness. In many cases, we have been fooled into believing that they are the exact same thing. And when we are so totally overwhelmed by the prospect of another day struggling, another day at the "grindstone" that means so little, we wonder where it was we got so lost? We look in vain for a light at the end of the tunnel, but the darkness seems to prevail. The illusion that advancement, that more money, more success, more, more, more, will somehow fix the sense of discontent we currently feel is so prevailing in this country, one can't begin to see to the other side of a room without noticing it. The subtle but true fact that if we actually got everything we thought we need, we wouldn't know what to do with it, is lost entirely.
Consider with so many people in this country are obese, addicted to various drugs, homeless, hopeless, and totally lost that the implications are staggering. If what we are doing to ourselves in this country is any indication, we should know the "gig is up." Instead we look to all sorts of people for "miracle cures" to address to our various ailments, addictions, and problems. We ask god for help, we ask our doctors for help, we ask politicians for help, we are ready and willing to listen to anyone who will tell us what it is we're doing wrong, how to get that "quick fix" so we can get back to the really important things in life: namely being busy with something else. We are looking for some sort of absolution to cure us of our own lifestyle and when we don't get it, we walk away more confused and dissatisfied. Thus we simply "throw ourselves into our work" once again and try to shake off the nagging thought that we are missing the point entirely. We keep looking for the next "snake oil" salesman to come down the pike with the latest nostrum, many times it is the same old thing repackaged to look like something new and we just keep looking. We're searching so hard and the harder we look the more elusive the answer becomes.
We are all on a journey in this life. The ultimate journey will end with our death, (Or will it? That's another question for another time). We treat life like an endless series of destinations, we find the journey to be the problem keeping us from getting where we want to go. We sacrifice the moment in favor of some undiscovered future that awaits us. We sacrifice who we are for who we would rather be, if only wishing would make it true. The ironic part about the whole thing is power to change the face of things is and always has been within each of us, but we have been taught not to trust that. So we keep racing down the highway and by the time we get where we thought we were going, we realize that it was really something else we were looking for. And so the process repeats itself over and over again- we keep reaching forward: "If only I had the right job, then I'd be happy, if only I had the right partner, then I'd be able to relax, if only I had more money, more education, more spirituality, more this, more that." Nothing is ever enough, the moment is never good enough, we must always be restless nomads on an endless journey to nowhere ending in death. We have heard that there is something called happiness, but we never seem to have the time to truly discover what that is. There are bills to pay, work to be done, there is a home, a myriad of possesions, and cars to maintain. Our children need shoes, we are caught up in a million different things that seem to require our constant attention. What do we end up with? If we survive to retire, we're too used to moving all the time to learn to be still, if our body is in any condition to move we just keep doing things until we cannot anymore. Then we sit and reminisce about the "good old days" when we were young and spry and useful to ourselves and others. Back when we had the energy and the power to do important things and feel important about ourselves. Most of us retire feeling worn out, used up, and many of us end up forgotten by those we spent all those years sacrificing and working for. We are cast aside by a society who has no use for old worn out things. Eventually, if we don't die first, we end up in some nursing home where, if anyone visits us at all, it is only to appease the guilt we feel for disposing of our relatives. Obviously we're too busy to take care of them ourselves! What we are essentially is a consumable society disposing of others whenever their usefulness is all used up.
What have I described here to you, a plot for a movie? It is indeed, but I think perhaps it is a message that many of us don't want to hear. In 1999, a science fiction movie called The Matrix attempted to demonstrate all the things I've written, and it did it so well, that a lot of people didn't realize the parallel to our own lives. Caught up in the illusions of action, the adventure, the special effects, they simply thought it was a "bitchen movie" when in fact it attempted to affect us the true nature of our very lives- we are born a slave, we live our lives as "batteries" for the system, and when our charge is gone, we are quietly and discretely disposed of.
I wonder what would happen if our country suddenly "woke up" to the truth, let alone the entire world? Would they recognize the illusion behind the illusion? Would they be content to "...Pay no attention to the man behind the curtain," as with the Wizard of Oz? Is it better to deny the truth to remain comfortably and not-so-blissfully tucked in the warmth of what isn't really there instead of facing the cold reality of a world we no longer have any true reference points in? It's as if we live our lives on the edge of a great cliff and many of us simply fall off, we cannot keep our balance. The rest of us teeter with such a precision of balance that it would make any tightrope walker jealous. We are content to live out our lives without any question of whether we are really living our lives, or are our lives actually living us? Just remember: the Matrix is real, but there is no spoon.
"Do not try and bend the spoon, that's impossible…instead try to realize the truth."
"What truth?"
"That there is no spoon. Then you will realize that it is not the spoon that bends, it is you."
-The Matrix