Ever get that: "Need to Change my Life" feeling?

Ever get that feeling when you look around and think, "man, thats messed up."
I care so much about my stupid possessions, my greatest worry is money, and lack of it, my whole life is one big stressed-out worry about 'keeping up with the joneses.'
And "wanting that" or "needing that", or "this will make life easier."

But all that shit just complicates everything even more.

I want to live more simply, I don't want to worry about 'what to wear', just have the same three outfits and pick one.
I get so focused on crap that doesn't matter - and I miss out on time with my husband or child.
I get mad because of an argument about "things," or I feel like a bad parent because my 1 year old doesn't have an iPad.

What the hell?! Why should I be made to feel that way?


- Flowermama

 

i know i've been too sane for too long, and its kept me from being what this world needs. you can't force simplicity by pretending complexity away. that is a common mistake people make all the time, and it only makes more complexity more needlessly the more people try to do that.

of course you don't have to try and impress anybody. that isn't complexity though, that is a form of self indentured slavery. complexity is innocent and friendly by comparison.

trying to impress anyone isn't being considerate of them either.
the only good reason to want something is to enjoy using it. playing with it. making art with it. building things. that sort of thing.

art is not a seperate thing. making, creating, and explorig too, these are not spectator sports, these are what living is. society, what people expect of each other. that is the low grade entertainment. the cheezy cheap thrill.

tools and toys are useful and fun. but other things, fancy crap just to be fancy crap, yah, that is a complete waste.

 

I feel that we live in an age of excess.Excess product that we don't really need.There is just too much of everything...It all seems endlessly replaceable but it isn't.It is resources.Valuable resources that are being used up like in some stinking sausage machine.Like in Britain we have this yogurt brand that comes in about 100 different flavors.Does that make me any happier than when I was a kid and we had maybe plain,strawberry,peach and banana flavor? No in fact it makes me more depressed...Like we're just wallowing in this mechanized product World.I'm not anti technology or scientific progress as such,I just feel that we need to use it responsibly.And I hate it in TV commercials - yes,I watch TV - when everybody is just supposed to be so damn happy about all this crap,saving money,cheaper this,more of that...God it makes me sick.And yes it's hard to change your life when you are trapped in this system...You become an unwilling participant.At least I feel like I am.I am against nearly everything that is happening...I just can't kind find my peace anywhere.

 

I can take solace in the fact that I can understand everything is bullshit. I try not to get bent out of shape about stupid shit like competing with everyone else.

 

Our whole culture revolves heavily around materialism; our economy is based on it. Possessions and wealth have become a cultural judgement of not only material value, but human value, and it's so ubiquitous that it's very difficult to get away from. Media is completely permeated with consumerism; it's just the way it is, unfortunately. Re-aligning your values away from materialistic goals takes a lot of very conscious effort. Reminding yourself of how much simpler life is when you have less stuff is a good start; less stuff= less work.

 

peace can be found in the forest and in the garden, even if one can only plant it in their own mind. perhaps i was blessed to grow up an only child in a spiritually diverse family, and in mostly small villages surrounded by relative wilderness. while not in extreme poverty, my dad worked for the railroad, as telegrapher/towerman/clerk. what was called in those days train order operator. at any rate we were a lot further from anything resembling wealth then poverty. but we had the wealth of being surrounded by nature. the world of symbolic value, in which people confused the symbol with the value, resided in a small box with a window into it, that set in the corner and could be, and often was, turned off. though my mom was somewhat addicted to it, missing her large and emotionally close family, my father and i were not, and often went for long walks, seperately or together, out into the wilderness, to observe and enjoy the countryside, and the company of its non-human residents.

 

All you need is God and some anxiety medication. That's it, I promise you.

 

while the hugs of god or gods, and other invisible things are indeed wonderful, what humans pretend to know about them, and their pretensions of doing so, are not. no. the problem is indeed cultural. this is however, by no means unchangeable. there is no magical "all you need" wand. a closer connection to nature and a further distancing from that illusion of all encompassingness of human society, is however greatly beneficial to peace, inner calm, and sanity.