I Am Not Special

These four words will save your life

Chances are, if your life was anything like mine, you were told by someone at some point that you were special. Usually, it’s a parent, grandparent, or other adult who first says something like this to a child. Sometimes it’s a teacher. Sometimes it is twaddle from an esteem-building children’s story.

“You’re special. You can do anything you want.”

“You can be anything you like when you grow up, because you are special!”

“Don’t worry about what that bully said; they are just jealous because you are so special.”

“You aren’t like the other girls (or guys), you’re special.”

However it is worded, it somehow seeps into our psyche. The world is comprised of special individuals like us, and then there is everyone else. For some reason, we never stop to consider that everyone is walking around feeling special.

Everyone thinks they are the main character. Yet, I can say beyond a shadow of a doubt that none of us is the main character. Main characters live happily or unhappily ever after. All of us die at the end of our story.

No ever after.

Nada.

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I Paint My Poverty In Beauty

By doing so, we become rich

I am grateful to love old things. Corners worn smooth through years of love and use. Patches and mending threads give proof of adoration to well-worn garments. Repairs and mending are nothing more nor less than a bandage on a loved one’s knee, a kiss and a promise that all will be well again soon.

Old things, like you and I, are perfect in their imperfection.

All I can do is imagine the dissatisfaction and unhappiness for those that depend on the new and shiny, the unobtainably trendy, to bring them joy. Especially when their income is as paltry as ours. It must be painful to covet clean lines, Pottery Barn dreams, and the plastic haberdashery of the finest modern design.

Loving old things lends us the privilege of genteel poverty. Castoffs from a century ago, sometimes less and sometimes more, feel luxurious compared to particle board knock-offs of modern designs.

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Forget the Grind, Hustle Culture, and the Great Lock-In

It’s time for an Industrious Revolution

Whether you call it grinding, hustle culture, or the newest moniker to hit the internets, the “great lock-in,” it all boils down to the same thing — trading away your life energy for things you have been to told to want and need for the benefit of billionaires and shareholders who, frankly, don’t give a damn if you live or die.

Since the dawn of the industrial revolution, the general masses have been trained to grind away as many waking moments as possible to “earn a living.”

I have a secret to tell you. That’s right, lean in and I shall whisper it: No one needs to “earn” a living — it was granted to you the moment you emerged from the womb. Living, that is, not all the detritus and stuff that comes with it.

As animals, living isn’t something we are meant to earn, but to take. We take the air we breathe as we need. We should be able to take shelter where we can find it, although certain greedy human animals have done what they can to take more shelter than they need so they can fool the rest of us into thinking we need to earn it.

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Why I Am Done With Human Domestication

Are you a tame, wild, or domesticated animal?

Photo by Christopher Windus on Unsplash

The half acre of land that makes up my front yard is a mixture of lawn grasses, invasive plants, and native flora. Each morning, a menagerie of native mule and white-tailed deer, robins, and douglas squirrels commune and compete with introduced eastern gray squirrels, barred owls, and wild turkeys.

All are wild, although some of the mule deer and douglas squirrels are tamed due to their own choices and human meddling.

I, on the other hand, am domesticated. Uneasily I pace within the cage, both this physical home with window sizes and wall heights prescribed by international building codes, and the psychological home of for-profit work, infinite growth economics, and modern constructs of the good and proper life.

Inside, I am a wild animal, willing to be tamed but chafing at the bit of forced domestication.

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