All things being equal, of course, I’d prefer not to have to be Employed at all, because of the wage slave aspect.
But things aren’t equal and for a poor prose poet boy they never will be, not even if he lives much longer than anyone ever expected.
Just like my fellow traveler John Nichols; all dumb speculation about secret silver spoons to the side.
That is a lesson I’ve had to learn the hard way over and over.
It comes down to four thousand dollars and a pickup truck any way you scheme to slice it.
I didn’t want to tell you that, and while we’re down in the weeds here’s another one.
When I woke up this morning, I was happy. Even though the sleep was exactly the same, seven hours from 4 to 11, the morning was brighter, my body felt better, the gray cloud above my head was thin and wispy and barely there at all.
I woke and I was not under the gun. I had no worry, about where some imaginary meal seven or fourteen months from now would be coming from.
What I really don’t want to say is: given the empire world we live in, being a wage slave might just be really good for me.
This is obvious from a physical, financial, materialist POV. The hard part is admitting that it might be spiritually good, and maybe even artistically good. For me. Right here and right now.
That too is dumb speculation.
The meal I may have the privilege of eating a year from now (god willing and the creek don’t rise) is a complete fabrication born of an unenlightened mind. The whole sense of security and well-being is nothing but a dance of neurons, and the exact same is true about the worry of not having that security.
Māyā (माया) is the proper word for all of it.
According to one pencilhead, the word comes from the Sanskrit root mā which means “to measure”. According to some others, it means tricksy mental magic that keeps us from being One with the All. “In Buddhist philosophy, Māyā is invoked as one of twenty subsidiary unwholesome mental factors, responsible for deceit or concealment about the nature of things”. Because the Buddhists, they just love a good list of factors.
We do it to ourselves with worry, and we do it to ourselves with joy too.
We say: this place, has these attributes. We say: The truth about this situation is thus, and so.
It’s all intricately woven lies and invention, sometimes really beautiful and sometimes tragically destructive.
Reality–Reality doesn’t have any attributes.
That’s the truth. But still. I will not say no to a good feeling.
I will explore it instead, because as the sage tells us:
It feels good to feel better.
