When do you have all that you want? When are your needs met? When is it enough? And if you have shelter, health, wealth, love and safety, are you greedy for wanting more? Is “It” a finite commodity? Is there a limited resource and wanting more, seeking more, earning more somehow deprives another? Is there some inherent sinfulness to want more? Where is the cut off? Is this avarice? Greed? Gluttony? I have taken no vows of poverty. I do not live or ally with a religious faction or political group that demands the dispersal of possessions like Betty Crocker frosting on a sheet cake. If I do the work, if I apply the grease and the muscle, if I come up with the bright idea and if I convert the idea to reality…..to whom does that reality belong? And shall I accept that I should be content? That I should not aspire to higher or more? Do my dreams and aspirations steal from what already exists?And if my dreams run counter to another’s, to whom if priority given? Am I to subjugate my dream in sacrificial offering for another’s?
As I see it, unless my dreams bleed from my OWN efforts and obligations…what business is it of anyone else? I might run a marathon or write a book or open a bakery or invent a contraption and as long as it does not drain away from my pre-existing endeavors, what does it matter? And so what if they do? Am I not permitted to change? Life, at least my life, is not a linear, straight shot across the universe like some simplified, single arc. I would argue that nobody’s life is a simple, single arc through time lacking in tangents, offshoots or diversions.
We expect (nay demand) that people NOT change. Can you imagine the outrage if Tiger Woods announced he was quitting golf? He’s CRAZY! He’s mental. Every time someone changes their parameters, the general public cries foul. Chastity Bono becomes a man and we all get an opinion. If Hillary Clinton stepped down from Secretary of State, we’d all wonder if she were sick. It’s her boobs, right? She’s got cancer. We refuse to allow people (and ourselves) the latitude to change and do something different.
As I see it….the ONLY simple, straight shot that exists is this ONE LIFE I have on this rock. And if I want to change rails and do something different….my life. Might I fail? Yep. Michael Jordan was a pretty average baseball player. Might I be wrong and changing rails ultimately proves to be a colossal mistake? It’s a possibility….but to not act and to not take the risk is to squander a life, a gift. A fortune stuffed in a mattress serves what purpose? It is an insurance policy. It is a bet against yourself. I don’t advocate squandering the fortune. But living a whole life of poverty and thrift just “in case” tragedy happens….is also unwise and wasteful. There is a balance. Some days, I tip the scales this way; tomorrow I will tip them that way.
But no…to answer the question. I don’t have everything I want. I have my needs met. What I have “will do”. But not forever. I want more…and by “more” I mean more times at bat. I don’t mean more money (although that is nice). I mean more awareness, more experience, more knowledge, more wisdom, more humility, more grace, more stillness. More is dynamic. More is awareness. More is presence. And More is one of the stubby books I loved reading to my Cam as a toddler.
More, More, More.
And that’ll do, Pig.