Thoughts on a Labor Day

"Do what you love, and you'll never work a day in your life." You'll also never see a single paycheck, because that's not how work works. However, that does describe my lifestyle - though not entirely by choice. I enjoy the flexibility and control over my own time, and the freedom from stress and dealing with other people. But not receiving the capital that our society defines as value has a definite lasting impact on my feeling of self-worth. And that's a significant price to pay for these privileges.

I know there are people out there who work really hard at their jobs. (I also know that how hard you work doesn't necessarily scale with the size of your paycheck). But I also know that I work at least as hard as some people who do get paid a full-time wage (office jobs are notoriously padded with downtime). From my perspective, you can't blame me for thinking that what you're getting paid for isn't the service you provide or the product you create, it's dealing with the stress and the inconvenience of making yourself uncomfortable on somebody else's time. You're trading your soul and your peace of mind for money, a little bit at a time.

And I still envy you, because there are a lot of things I could do with money that would make me and the people I care about happier than they are.* But if my persistent anxiety is any indication, I fear I'd have to conclude that I don't believe it's worth it. I just hate the feeling that I'm a valuable resource - I'm smart, and I'm a hard worker in spite of my avoidant personality - and my life is being wasted because nobody out there is in a position to tap my potential. I want to do big things. I want to matter. But I've seen the future, and I die a nameless nobody. My journey is just a process of learning to accept it. I'll probably even outlive most of the few people who know me and care about me. That is, if my fragile heart doesn't give out way before my time...

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*Money doesn't buy happiness, but it can offset a lot of unnecessary suffering, and put you in a better position to thrive. You hear about it, but I feel like it's hard to imagine when you live in a bubble. I don't want to out anyone, or embarrass anyone, so I won't name any names, but I've personally known (and in some cases personally helped, despite not even having a job) people who have been unable to afford groceries, to pay their electric bill, to get their air conditioner fixed in the summer, to buy gifts for their kids at Christmas, to hire a lawyer to sue for custody arrangements, to have a place to stay and food to eat and clothes to wear after their house burned down in a fire...

These are, by and large, necessities of living in modern day civilization - not luxuries. I don't approve of all of these people's lifestyle decisions, and not all of them are good at managing money. But I still like them as people, and I don't think they deserve to suffer without the basic necessities of life. It's also hard to say no when people you care about are asking you for help, even when you're barely living above their means. It's a no-win situation. You either enable their vices (like buying them groceries after they've spent all of their own money on cigarettes), or feel like a horrible person (because you're letting them go hungry).

But that's why these difficulties aren't isolated to the people that suffer them. It's the reason I changed my mind about drug laws. I used to think that if somebody wanted to eat poison and destroy themselves, they should have the freedom to do so. But then I saw firsthand the effect that has on your loved ones, who didn't consent to seeing you destroy yourself, but moreover, didn't consent to the financial and emotional drain your destruction would inevitably have on them.

People make dumb decisions sometimes and it hurts more than just themselves. But that's our responsibility as a society, to help each other out. But how can we help each other out when we're stretched so thin that we can barely help ourselves? And yet a few people in this world have obscene stores of money. You think anybody actually deserves that much more money than a person can make working an honest living at a full time job? Billionaires aren't gods. They aren't saints. I believe some people do deserve more than others. But there is no cosmic justice, and we do a horrible job of deciding what anybody deserves or doesn't deserve.

It's why our justice system is a circus court. But I can tell you this, nobody deserves to have a billion or even a million dollars until everybody can afford at least the basic necessities of life. And if you think somebody deserves less because of poor choices they've made, well too bad. Because the people who make good choices and deserve more don't always get it, either. That's just not how the system works. So congratulations for making it in this unfair world. You think you can just vote to keep things more or less the same, so you can go on thriving, as long as it's somebody else who has to suffer for the failures in our system? What a wonderful person you are.

I'm not personable. I prefer to keep to myself mostly. I don't want to suffer for the poor choices other people have made, that I've consciously avoided making. That's why you won't see me opening up a soup kitchen, or inviting refugees into my home. But I'm not putting my head in the sand and saying "I've got mine - that's all that matters." That's why I support social reform. If people can help themselves, then it's less of a burden on me. So, yeah, it's selfish, but it's selfish in the sense that I thrive when other people are thriving, too. Not by profiting off of their misery. Isn't that how society should work?