Weekly Three
HEAR: Happy Halloween! Without further ado, let us jam too “Creep” by Radiohead.
READ: I really enjoyed this article on why Schopenhauer thought music is the greatest of all artforms. And it includes some thoughts on the similarities between nature and art.
VIEW: The very first two hours of MTV. This was a kind of revolutionary thing back in the day. Music TV . . . what!? There are some amazing jams in here.
No. 49: Magic
“Strenuousness is the immortal path. Sloth is the way of death.”
Welp, there he goes. Another capitalist blazing a trail to the top.
And — what’s this? — he doesn’t care about the lives he’s negatively impacting along the way?
And — can it be? — he seems completely okay with the fact that his best-selling product is irreversibly damaging the environment?
And — you’re kidding, right? — his business runs on the labor of ten to twelve year-old Chinese children working in a badly-ventilated factory?
Gross. But wait.
There’s this sparkling glint of something beautiful in the way he cashes in his checks at the bank . . . in the way he comes home to his family at night, plopping onto the couch beside his kids with a tired smile on his face . . . in the joy he feels when he wins a business deal . . . in the failure he feels when the next deal falls through.
What is that — that glint?
It’s a man trying to make a better life for himself in his imperfect way.
Something beautiful about humans? We always try and try and try to improve our lot in life.
Living in the exorbitantly expensive bay area is one way to make yourself painfully aware of just how much better you can do, at least financially. The boxy lines of my 1980s Volvo clash with a freeway filled with streamlined Teslas. When I ride my bike into the Oakland hills and Moraga neighborhoods, I wonder about the domestic bliss I’d feel living in one of those beautiful, grandiose homes peeking out from behind the branches of old oak trees, their windows glowing orange from warmly lit living rooms within.
These people, with these houses, in these cars, we can presume, have done better. They have the home, the family, the job. They have the savings account, the cars, the bikes. Their worries are few.
It seems.
In any case, I wonder if these monied people have lost some of the excitement that comes with the feeling having to fight to make your way in the world. The genuine (financial) struggle — when the total cost of a mortgage, food to fill your belly, and a car puts you in near-red territory — has ended for them.
It’s hard to describe or rationalize but, somehow, that struggle — the struggle of slowly, arduously, methodically working your way forward just to call the roof over your head your own — is enjoyable. And I wonder if sometimes people that materially "have it all" miss it.
I know most people my age dread it. We want it all, dammit!
Because, culturally, the struggle is posed as the “grind” or the “paying your dues” period of life. The perception is that it’s a temporary and uncomfortable yet necessary period that we all must endure before achieving lasting peace and happiness brought on by wealth.
But what if we we decide to bask in our struggle? What if the struggle is the real, meaningful thing, not the house that we (hopefully) secure at the end of it?
Some might look back on hard times fondly. Some might look back with disgust, then count their blessing for where they are now. But regardless of how anyone feels about it, I think the struggle brings out the best in us. It makes us superhuman, requiring wit, creativity, strength, sacrifice, hard work, risk.
We are, perhaps, most alive when big obstacles loom in the distance that we have to overcome. I encountered a Marcus Aurelius quote once:
The impediment to action advances action. What stands in the way becomes the way.
What's a more pure embodiment of the human experience than the tension between adversity and prosperity? What we normalize as the standard happy life — a life of plenty — is in fact the rarest human condition of all. True happiness, then, is perhaps most perfectly achieved during the times we are struggling and straining towards some perceived future happiness.
My little studio? My little job? My old Volvo that runs like a champ?
My puppy dog? My family? My friends?
My life? My health? My struggle to do better, even if the path is unclear?
All of this?
It’s magic. ♦
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