The life of our future selves

Floor the gas
push it to the limit
max it out baby we only get one chance ...

Oh wait, that's not true at all.
Slow and stead I'm the fucking cheshire rabbit.
Taking my my time, slowing my rhyme, living my life, one day at a time.

I met a young man yesterday ... he had his own homestead, I have to admit I was a bit jealous but that is not the purpose of this post.

He had lived on the land for 8 years ... and I was surprised by how little work he had done on the land. I was upset at first ... envious.

How could he be so privileged and not create more with what he had??

I was angry as I wanted a space like that my own. He had inherited the land from family ... blessed.

But! After further consideration, I saw that he did not need to do anymore. He was living comfortably and was accommodating his own needs. Why should he do anymore?

There is a real need for service to others ... to balance the playing fields so to speak, but at the same time, do we really need to struggle??

When I was younger I told myself that I would suffer so that others could succeed. My guilt at being born wealthy was so much that I felt the need to scrape my knuckles raw in order to give to others, to cleanse my soul of this abundant burden of wealth.

How dare I have more than others?
How can I live with myself when others are starving?

The lives that we are given are not inherently equal or fair ... some are born with the silver spoon and some are born with no spoon at all. To deny this is to live in the midst of lies, but to torture oneself because of their opulence, I think, is to laugh in the faces of those without. If you want to give everything you have away do so, but if you choose to maintain a modicum of wealth do it with gratitude and joy, for those who do not have would surely appreciate that which you do.

I do not want to be obscenely wealthy -- I fear the way that money would shape and twist me -- but I do want privilege, I want the opportunity to experience lavishness and to be able to relax and rest, from time to time.

I think that the way our civilization is headed there is potential for everyone to experience this degree of wealth ( to some extent). While we may not all become mega millionaires, we can all experience the riches of having our own home. We can all experience the wealth of being able to choose what we do with our time. We can all live in the true abundance that we are divinely granted and be able to enjoy our lives.

These claims may seem far fetched to some, but if you can imagine the extrapolation of technology, and how it will exponentially increase our human productivity, we no longer need (in a not so distant future) to labor and struggle to meet our needs. With collaboration and intentional sharing we can all have enough resources to meet and exceed our needs. Again, I don't know the extent to which our opulence will reach the masses but I do know that our ability to share, our ability to compromise, our ability to love others will be the main limiter in our ability to reach a state of equality and true wealth on this planet.

If you look at Africa there is a fascinating thing occurring -- because of the time at which technology (namely cellular technology) reached the continent -- nearly everyone has a cell phone, and for over a decade has been using it as their main form of banking. This mobile banking, the venmo revolution, something that we now take for granted in my country, the United States, was proliferating in Africa before it became a thing here. It is the equalizing force of technology, the great leveler that will bring all people to stand at the same height.

To see and acknowledge this is to see the future. We have a choice to make -- whether we want to cling to the past and try and fight to maintain any degree of betterness that our race and birthplace gave us -- or to accept the future and humbly hand over the keys to the fortune to those who deserve it the most.

I was born a cis-gendered white male in a middle class, educated family in the United States. Surely the genetic fucking lottery handed me the golden ticket. For that I thank you -- knowing that, I will share my spot ... not sacrifice my self, but rather make space for others as this seat is expansive and is better suited to being shared than being hoarded.