Friday, July 18, 2008

What are you gonna do?

I was on a field job recently, and it was out in the suburbs of this town.

Near the site was one of those shithole commerical developments, you know the type: There's a walmart store or a target, and then in a strip mall next to the parking lot there are 2 shitty restuarants, a radio shack, a great clips salon, etc... Right next door to this there was some condos...just some crappy middle-to-lower income housing.

I started thinking that there are people that live in those condo's, and are assisstant manager of that radio shack, get their groceries from the superwalmart there, and get their haircut at the cost cutters. Its like a closed system...just out there using resources.

I mean there's gotta be more than a few people that live like that. Rarely going outside of that comfort loop to see anything in the world, to meet different people, and because of it, there's no record of anything they might accomplish. Though the concept of significant accomplishment by people in that situation doesn't seem likely.

So I started thinking about myself....like ok I've traveled around a bit, seen stuff, but I have this naive and really self-centered view that somehow the life I'm living is any different or better than if I worked at that radio shack. I go to work, I come home, I consume food, gasoline, shit like that. and what do I give back? what's my exit from that closed loop?

I tell myself that I work for an environmental company and that I'm doing shit to help the environment, or that if I travel to europe somehow I'm more worldy than that person who works his shift as a line cook at Huang's Asian Express next to the great clips and watches the history channel at night.

I don't really have anything. and I'm not trying to sound depressing, I mean if you pull-the-camera back far enough, all any of us really do is exist in the world, with a very small, VERY small minority of people that actually DO anything that is remarkable. Nothing anyone does really matters in the long run, and if you really get ape-shit and think about your existence in the context of geologic time...you don't mean shit as an individual. T

what significant accomplishments can I ever hope to do that would record my existence outside of the immediate people I know? Maybe this is the wrong way to measure your life - or even consider yourself. Rather what's really important is what you mean to the other people in life, those immediate people that you know. or maybe you're not supposed to consider any of that and just live your life.

Like really just kick the shit out of life.