The Picture of My Success

It was a long night working…3.5 hours of sleep sandwiched in between sitting at my computer in my pajamas. What is it that drives people to work like this? Or to work at all?

I’ve wondered this many times – but the answers are always right there, held up by our culture and our society – home, family, security, success. The smiling couple with the two kids and the golden retriever standing on their freshly cut lawn with their shiny new minivan in the background. And look! Right next door there’s another family just the same!

You can look at that picture two ways.

Our society looks at that picture as a collection of THINGS sustained by MONEY – the house (mortgage, insurance), the car (car payments, more insurance), the children (clothes, food, toys, books, shoes, piano lessons), the dog (more food, vet bills), the lawn (had to get the lawnmower repaired), the parents (psychiatrist’s fees), and so on.

I fall into the same trap, but only because I was brought up that way. Don’t get me wrong – it’s no more our parents’ fault than it is my fault that I’m doing the same thing to my kids. We’re stuck in a perpetual feedback loop of being granted a certain lifestyle by our parents, and wanting to give our children the same (or better) than what we got. Then they’ll grow up and want to do the same for their children. I wish instead we could look at that picture and see a collection of PEOPLE sustained by RELATIONSHIPS.

If we took all of the things out of that picture, wouldn’t the people still be left? And couldn’t they still be happy? Sure, they’d be naked, cold, and hungry, and they’d miss Johnny’s soccer game because they couldn’t walk to the field and back before sundown, but they would still be a family.

I adore my family, every one of them, and I would never give them up for the world…but many times I wonder if we couldn’t be just as happy living as a group of hunter-gatherers in the Pleistocene, with nothing to worry about but where the next meal is coming from, and which cave we’re going to sleep in tonight. Wouldn’t the kids still have fun? Wouldn’t my wife and I still treasure each other? If we didn’t know money existed and had no need for it, couldn’t our life still be pleasurable, and valuable, and fulfilling?

And don’t start on me how the average life expectancy of a Pleistocene hunter-gatherer was less than 20 years, or that recent studies show that they spent 75% of their time just LOOKING for food, or that it’s a lot easier to face down a Taurus on my neighborhood street than a mastodon at full charge. This is my fantasy, not some paleontologist’s.

By the way, I’m not cynical, just tired. Sometimes, I just wish we lived in a society where THINGS were not all-important, where we had the luxury of not even knowing they existed. For the record, I enjoy my 4-door sedan and my 27-inch TV and my multimedia computer and my steaks barbecued on the grill and my refrigerator full of cold drinks as much as the next guy. And don’t even think about trying to take away our soft new bed, or my shiny new bike, or the kids’ Nintendo 64 – you will be taking your life in your hands.

If you drive by my house, you may see me standing on the freshly cut lawn with my smiling family, with my (not so-shiny, I never wash it) car in the background, and a cat or two (sorry, no dog) in the window. Be sure to wave.