Yep, it's Sunday morning, and I've been up and about way too long already. I had to get up and go to Walhell to get my oil changed and price tires for the rear of my car. Oil change wasn't too painful, but I killed time by shopping and that wasn't the best for my pocket book. It's not that I didn't need anything I bought, I just know those tires are going to cost me, and I really, really need them so that I can get to work and back, and so that I can keep my tiny mobile business mobile. Tax write-off for business is great - at tax time - but I still haven't quite reached a steady flow of enough business to keep up with bills and necessities.
These facts bring me to my topic this morning. While I think the USA is a great nation, having lived in it my whole life, and only having seen snippets of life in other countries and cultures, I do still have a few things I think could be improved. Yes, I know the whole deal about responsible voting, but do you really think that has any effect in today's political world? No matter how carefully you weigh past actions, personal lives, hidden business pacts, etc., when you're voting, you are placing your trust in someone you really don't know at all, and choosing them over someone else you really don't know at all. And this is a big country with a lot of different political views and pretty much every political figure has an agenda that may or may not agree with any given individual's hopes and plans.
Our nation, however magnificent it may be, is very broken and in desperate need of an overhaul. Do I know how to fix it? Hell no! Do I know who to call to fix it:? Again, hell no! I think it has become too large a monster to overcome without tearing it all the way down to the dirt, and maybe further than that, and starting over from scratch. That, unfortunately, requires aggressive and horrifying actions that could only be viewed as terrorism by the mass populace, myself included - or revolution...again. And I am most definitely not willing to see anything that extreme happen here.
But this plays very deeply into a theme I have observed (and mentioned) over and over again in my life. The USA is the current Roman Empire. And we all know what happened to that. Think about it. We place a high value on our celebrities - athletic stars, movie stars, people who are famous simply for the sake of being famous, even political figures are celebrities, whether or not they started out that way. What's worse is that we value these figures much more than the truly valuable members of our society - teachers, law enforcement, fire and rescue, military (low ranking, especially), and the every day joes who do jobs no one else wants to do. Do you think that celebrity would be caught dead trying to handle the waste management station for a high school? He or she isn't really above that sort of work, but has been made to seem so (and thus to think so) because we, the people, have placed them at a higher station.
And even while we place these largely undeserving figures on a pedestal, we romanticize about such figures who are actually capable of and willing to do those unpopular chores. Forever counterbalancing life in our vast imagination, we take the already high-and-mighty and teach them humility by having them slop the pigs, or conversely, taking street hoodlums and turning them into scientific geniuses who cure the world's ills. But this only happens in stories, in fantasies. When someone does seem to be the essence of one of these fantastical beings, we immediately distrust the idea, and the media step in to dig up all the dirt that can be found so that this person no longer shines like the hero we thought we'd found.
Not only are we upside-down in our beliefs of who is important and who should be important, we are decidedly undecided about the whole affair. And this isn't the only area where we, the USA at large, is confused. Fast is more important than good - another theme that constantly repeats itself around me.
I've had a number of jobs where the speed at which I produced the result was made more important than the result itself. While there is value in being able to work fast, it is thrice as important, in my mind, to work accurately and thoroughly. Even in my new industry- massage therapy - scheduling is given much more importance than being able to thoroughly handle everything that needs to be handled. I find myself having to skimp on the legs in the interest of being sure I work that knot out of the shoulder blade, because my time is limited to 60 or 90 minutes. I don't like working that way, even when the recipient has said it's alright. I would much rather say, I will spend a minimum of 60 minutes on your issues. I will charge $1 per minute above that to provide the most thorough service for you. The next person waiting should understand that this same consideration will be provided for them, and that everyone will receive the absolute best I can provide. Then I could schedule a larger gap between massages to allow for time overages, and still have enough time to clean and reset for the next recipient. I shouldn't have to always move towards the fastest solution, when that solution doesn't work for everyone. I should always be able to choose whatever is the best solution for that person, no matter the amount of time involved. That, to me, would make my massage the most valuable thing I can give.
I understand that fitting more massages into the day brings more money to the business, and I make it very important to ensure that the quality of the massage I give is very high so that the recipient wants to come back to me. But here's where I see the biggest failing in our society, all the way around. Money is the most important factor of all. We live and die, yearly, daily, hourly, and even minute-by-minute trying to make money to live. If we were strip it down to the core again, the first thing I would get rid of is money, then politicians, then celebrities. Service for service, goods for goods, goods for service. Each individual is responsible for finding an honest way to get what is needed. If you can't grow it yourself, trade something that is valuable to the person who can. I see no reason why a person shouldn't be able to eat a meal for a song, quite literally. If that's the thing you have that is of value to someone else, by all means, sing that song for all you're worth and enjoy that life-sustaining meal. And nods to both the singer and the cook for being intelligent and wise at the same time!
I've seen a number of children's stories where a person needed something that he or she could not afford to buy. The plot takes the cast through a series of situations where a number of people need something that someone else has or can do for them, but they don't have or can't do something for the other. What resolves the situation is a sort-of interweaving of everyone's needs so that each person gets what he or she needs through one or another of the story's cast. Why is this lesson so valuable when we are children that it is taught to us over and over again, but when we reach adulthood, the absolute only thing that will get us anything is money? I love the barter system and use it whenever/wherever I can. There's just no other way I'm going to get some of the things I need, because I don't have enough money, and I'm not willing to sell my soul or my body to get them. They've both been through quite enough, thank you very much.
Again, I say that I have no idea how to fix our country, because the only way to bring the changes we need around is to not be a big country at all. These kinds of ideals only work in very small groups of people - small communities, not cities, states, or countries. Not unless the entire population is of like mind, and that's just not going to happen, because we are merely human, and subject to all that adjective entails. But I can wish, and hope, and send all the positive energy I can muster out to the universe to make it so. And I do all of the above.
Namaste.
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