Making the Best of What You Already Have

Most people can be doing far more with what they already have -- rather than incessantly needing more -- without end.  At some point, one should come to realize that one has all they actually need and use, and make very little of it, but to fuel their insatiable need for "more."  Such people actually do very little with what they already have, and feel the problem is always that they need more.  So it is an endless, vicious, corrupting cycle -- of never being satisfied with whatever one has -- but always demanding insatiably more.

The worst, is that they never get rid of anything -- but hoard everything they have, even if they've never used it once.  The acquisition and retention becomes ends in itself -- rather than just serving one's actual and real needs.  In fact, their cup runneth over, spoiling everything they have to uselessness, which they never realize, because they never actually use anything they have.  They simply like the idea of possessing things -- whether people, places, or things.  Even their memories are regarded that way.

It's not so much that they actually have anything useful to remember, but they just like having those memories -- whether they serve any real purpose or not.  More often than not, they are false memories -- of what they would like to remember, than anything that actually happened to them.  Information can always be retrieved -- if it is actually needed for a task.  But just to hold on to everything, refusing to let go of anything, never allows the space to learn and do anything new or different -- because they are always replaying their memories rather than devoting themselves fully to each present moment.

And that of course, is where a person needs to be -- fully and totally, to live their most productive lives.  All those reliving of their memories, is a de facto admission that they no longer are living in each present moment -- and may never have.  In every moment of their lives, they were reliving a previous moment -- and so quite naturally, life passed them by -- as being too preoccupied to do anything real and meaningful, let alone, significant.

The present moment implies the past, and the future -- which are not valid concepts in themselves, but are always dependent on what one actually does -- and not what they think and say of the past or future.  That is meaningless -- their entertainment, because they cannot think of anything more important and productive to do.  They become "experts" on the irrelevant and inconsequential.  They debate endlessly among each other and with themselves, so that nothing useful can ever be done -- and priding themselves that others are doing worse.

And that is their only concern -- that others are doing worse than they are -- who are doing nothing.  They might even write about it extensively to anybody who will listen to them -- and claim all kinds of awards, as though that was another achievement in itself.  But it is a totally fabricated existence that takes on a greater reality the more times they tell it.  It is their own self-fulfilling prophecy of faking it until they make it -- which they never do.   They are living entirely in their own echo chambers.  The fantasy is preferable to any reality -- and even coming to know themselves as they actually are -- and that is the whole point of life, and any existence.

That is the whole meaning of life -- to find out what it is, and what one is capable of.  Of course many demagogues will tell them what that is -- and their place in the scheme of things.  From that point on, all one needs to do is repeat whatever they say -- as the only truth they need to know.  Many prefer such a life -- of never thinking for themselves, and allowing others to do all their thinking for them.  They like that safety in numbers -- reassured that that is what everybody else is doing.  But assuredly, it is not -- and at all times and places, there are always a few, determined to find out on their own -- what is actually happening.

Culture and environment produce such individuals -- and are the measures of such success.  Societies that don't produce such successful adaptions, must go extinct -- not just because they are killed off by others, but the culture is not viable, cannot stand the test of time and challenge.  The rest of the world cannot wait for them -- it must move on.  That is the story of evolution and civilization.  There will inevitably be winners and losers -- because not all actions are the same -- producing the same result.  The world just doesn't work that way -- no matter how much they try to engineer it.

Some ways work, and some won't -- and not that everyone can just do their own thing -- with equal results, no matter how much education they have.  That should be very reassuring to know -- for those who can know the difference, and make a difference.  The vast majority, just would rather not know -- but let others tell them what to think -- as though they thought of it themselves.  They have no way of knowing the difference -- so what the heck.  As long as they are on the side that's winning -- but they only know what others tell them -- as the truth.

So it is good to take stock and inventory, of what one actually has -- rather than the promises of what others will deliver -- if given enough time and money.