There are so many of us,
and so many are lost.
The world is bursting at the seams with us,
covering her like a pox
We are all Job's and Jezabel's
looking for some peace.
Looking for a leg up,
or vengeance for some unremembered transgression.
Every time I travel, the sheer amount of people I see who I will never know, will never meet, will never affect my life in any perceivable way is staggering. The bums, the businessmen, the musicians, the waitresses, sailors, the small-town moms and dads, their kids, their future girlfriends/boyfriends, the hotel maids, convenience store shoppers, restaurant patrons, groupies, the power lunch crowd, taco truck owners, park visitors, tourists, bicyclists, freeway drivers--all coming from somewhere, heading somewhere else, and wanting more.
I don't care about them in any individual, mother Theresa, humanitarian, the-poor-lot-of-the-world-huddled-masses manner. It may be callous, but meh... I think about how all of them combined are a tiny fraction of the real, unfathomable population of the world (7 billion). I think about heroin addicts in Amsterdam and Prague and how no one cares for them in an individual, mother Theresa, humanitarian, the-poor-lot-of-the-world-huddled-masses manner. They are left in those dirty streets to fend for themselves. Not everyone can be president, you know. Not even me with my relatively comfortable lifestyle, full set of teeth, relative self-awareness, and education. I am just another writer in a sea of writers competing with Pakistanis who can pay their rent with what it costs me to drive to the coffee shop and back six times. I am just another musician swimming in a soup of musicians, competing with 21-year old's with no kids and nothing to lose.
The predictable response to this kind of post is....you're a cynic, a pessimist. I think these two adjectives are often confused with...an unwavering sense of what is actually realistic. I often wish I lived in Yugoslavia where it was ok to be a bicycle courier, where being a bicycle courier is a pretty good job and not every Tom, Dick, and Harry, every Buddy, Guy, and Harold, every Jane, Sue, and Patty felt the overwhelming, crushing, don't-get-the-bends pressure to make more, More, MORE!! money, buy more stuff, spend your talents, time, and energy on attaining that (let's face it) impossible, reality-tv life. "Hey son... you can be (president, a millionaire, a CEO, rock-star, Oscar-winner, pro football player, etc.) someday." Well....nope.
You can be happy though. That one is possible. It's not wanting all that crap that's going to do it.
