Changing Wants

If I could just have a receding hairline to emphasize the swoosh of my greasy pompadour, strong forearms, and a pencil moustache I might be happy. That's a thought I'm pretty sure I had sometime just before my hormones kicked in. Probably like 1981.

Since that time I've come to understand rationally that nothing much actually matters in the long run. Of course this is no excuse to go about doing horrible things because when nothing really matters in the long run what matters most are the moments of the life you live. All you have to bargain with is what you put out-there. That is to say, if one wants to live in a world surrounded by pleasantness one's best effort to that end is to be pleasant. Spending the bulk of one's time screwing around and flipping people off will leave one with no right to complain about the lack of productivity and surplus of incivility in the world.

Of course even with the best of intentions we're only essentially animals. A good idea, I think, is to forgive other people their humanity even as they condemn you for yours. They'll call it weakness or some such drivel, but you'll know it as humanity if you give it just a moment's attention.

So in the end (of this pointless thought) I guess I embrace the idea that there are things more important than the self because the self is fleeting but we hope that the best of our society will not be. I say we with the assumption that you agree with me. And as with the assumption that these words mean something in any context to anyone I embrace it, intentionally ignoring the irony of the self-indulgence from which it was created.