Less is more

 

Oct. 31, 1985

 

I was more than a little strange at a boy – more than just a rebel.

I was a reflection of the world in which we lived, a bit like a Halloween character, struggling to unbend an ego twisted over reaction and guilt.

My own basic stupidity did the rest – or rather some self-destructive part of myself that still exists.

I suppose we all are stuck between two basic philosophies of living – one of Western thought base on the Greek concepts of a material world: i.e. the more you have the better off you are.

And the Eastern philosophy based on Indian and Chinese philosophers: less is better, and that possessions tend to possess those that claim to possess them.

People get chained to their possessions – that big house with a swimming pool. Although materialism might just as well mean all the so called trappings of success. The ego stuff that is as addictive as cocaine.

Sometimes getting what you strive for leads to a kind of dying, because what you find in the end isn’t all you thought it would be, but you’re stuck with it anyway.

I have a friend whose whole life is lost in a house, and she’s so bitter about it that she hates everyone and everything, and thinks everybody else wants what she has, when in truth, she would love to get rid of it, but can’t do so without losing face – she spent so much time scratching and clawing to get it that if she should give it up, she sees all that as done for nothing, and she’ll be back to where she was when she started.

The fact that the burden of the house and the life style is gone from her back does not seem to matter as much as being able to say she got it in the first place.

I’m still confused about what I want and what I see as material success, and how to get to the point where I think of less as more.

But I’m trying.