Letter 5

Dear No One,

Sometimes when I’m at work and it is the last place I want to be at I tell myself that it can’t go on forever and it won’t. I make it sound so terrible right? Like it is an real torture for me to go in Monday thru Friday. Well it can be sometimes and I think there are other people who feel the same. Work sucks because it’s work, even if it’s something you like to do. By definition working is making efforts and the fact of the matter is that humans don’t always want to be working all that hard. Funnily enough there is an evolutionary explanation for laziness. See before the collective efforts of society humans were like other mammals; spending most of our time searching for enough food. The natural form of work is forging and hunting. Now we live in a world of abundance unimaginable to our ancient ancestors. What I’m getting at is naturally our pursuit is for food and shelter, the world we navigate in has just changed. Work has changed with the growth of society and physically we are adapted to the ancient struggles of primitive humans. No One it is a mis-characterization to say that humans are naturally lazy, much more correct would be to say they seek comfort. And once we are comfortable we want to stay comfortable. Every body goes to work but not because they love it. There are things they want in life and the society we live in requires money to be exchanged for such things. Really we are all in the same position we are all just trying to make it. When I’m walking in the city I am very aware of the homeless I see. I think about this person, I wonder what their story is, how did they get there, how does this happen. Sometimes I get to talk to them. Life is a struggle and there are many I e met who have just lost so much because of chance. I’ve spoken with people who never wanted the constraints of the rat race. I’ve spoken with those who did everything right until something beyond their control swept them up and laid them out. Still those folks and I had something in common, we all were in pursuit of comfort in some way of other. For a person on the street the struggle is much more difficult and almost always for less. I work to pay my rent and sometimes I can be quite frustrated with the bills I owe. But with reflection am I not fortunate to have bills being my problem? Rather than struggling to find something to eat? And even then there are people who have jobs but don’t have enough to be able to by food. Work is not something I want to do but then there’s not having work and the appreciation of all that it helps to provide and maintain. It’s sink or swim. You want these things they you have pay for them. There is no discussion of the abundance of society. Just the focus on your personal responsibility to provide for yourself. No One I often reflect on this seemingly inherent stupidity. Markets throw literal tons of food away rather than give it to the starving. Why? Because if people could get food for free they wouldn’t spend money. We produce real, solid, nutritious food and then sacrifice it for the sake of some line of numbers on paper. No One I want to spell out the absurdity for you we produce and then waste the real for the sake of the imaginary. In my own job I see the maddeningly frustrating fact that I build large homes with abundant space which will only house a few people. Why does this bother me in some way? Because of my awareness of the homeless. The way we use the surface space available to use is foolish! We cut down and level more of the environment to build homes taking up space but which only house a few people, meanwhile thousands sleep in the streets. But as a culture we accept that this is how things are, that if you have the money to afford those things you can get it. Yet No One don’t you see that it’s all imaginary? We decided that homes are worth X amount, bigger homes have greater value, some can have while others will not, and believing that this is some how fair inherently. In reality it’s all chance there is no fairness. Because the strokes of luck, twists of fate, and place of birth are such determining it is factors in life not one individual is inherently privileged. We believe that hard work will get us somewhere but this is myth. Don’t get me wrong, No One, I am not saying hard work doesn’t get you something; what I’m saying is there is no guarantee. I remember being sold the idea of the “path of success”. Going to college is the first step to getting a good job and then by working very hard you can climb the ladder. It wasn’t until I tired doing it that realized I had been sold a story. College is the most important thing in a young persons life or its suppose to be and without an education you can’t get a good job. Right, but then I went to school and eventually realized that I was not better off financially for it. I saw so many of my friends and peers in similar positions of being educated but without the “good” job prospects. I realized that the counselors and advisors I had talked to were steering me to just finish rather than focusing on a comprehensive education. I remembered the college reps who visited my high school to talk about their particular institution, realizing that they were being paid and that a university would only do that if it brought them value. I began to understand that college is a business and everything they do is ensure continued enrollment, every poster, every piece of merchandise, every sport team, it all served the dual purposes of marketing and sales made. I realized that every body was going to college and therefore college was a product made and sold. So things didn’t work out for me in school, not the way that I thought it would but I got lucky and got a decent job. Now this decent job could become a “good job” and I could earn money—if I work hard. But then I noticed that while I was working hard I was getting paid the same as someone who wasn’t. We do the same job but I would end up doing more. Ok but if I try very hard and learn the skills I will get paid more. But they I hear the stories about people more skilled than me, who produce greater value, and struggle to get better pay. So what is the deal here? It’s the same deal as every where, it is not fair. Here’s the messed up part. Yes it’s not fair but if you want comfort then you have to deal with that. And the thing is even if I wanted to drop out of the rat race I would still have to struggle. I would still have to go to work. It would just be different. I get distracted by the absurdity of the economy. But it is a system created by humans and is bound to reflect human imbalance and imperfections. I may hate my job sometimes, I may hate the economy, and I definitely hate societies inequalities. But struggle predates them all, even if all that changed struggle would remain. We all like and want more comfort but the only way to be comfortable is to get uncomfortable from time to time. No One is dislike resignation and an acceptance of fate being as it is, I’m not fated to work any one specific job but it is our fate to struggle. Life it’s seems is defined by struggle and the effort an organism makes to overcome it. What it comes down to is keeping it going and growing my friend.