To be perfectly honest, I view myself as a have. I have every possible thing I could ever want or need at my fingertips. Sacrifice consists of having my wife dropping me off at work because my car’s busted. Or moving in with my parents because we can’t afford to live in the city. Or not being to be able to fit in breakfast before a long work day because I decided to sleep in a little.

There’s a multitude of other first-world problems I could throw in here, but it would end up sounding as preachy as it already does. This is my luxury though, my time for reflection. I can always bring down the sledge hammer of perspective with off-the-cuff statements like “I wonder how many people died of starvation in Africa today” or ” I wonder how much suffering occurs around the globe due to America”. A bunch of other high-horse-jaded-yet-privileged things pop into my mind, but just feel cliched beyond anything I can possibly come to terms with.

I can keep going in this loop, this endless cycle, but I feel I can at least throw a few of these cliches out there. At the very least I can look back on writing like this with shame and awe of how out of touch I was and still very well could be. Gotta keep an open mind, right? I just feel so out of touch with writing like this, because I can sit back and re-read it and already see the inherent hypocrisy, the conflict of ideas. It might be because I can’t structure an argument properly, but there’s the reason I come here. Hash it out and try and make a modicum of sense. Structure takes thought.

It doesn’t take thought though, because I already have everything I need right here. Everything. Yet I project into the future a better future with what I could have by effort expended now, ideas and work applied to this future self. Things could be so much better than they are now, if only I applied myself more. That idea right there is at the heart of a maddening paradox. Do more to achieve more, if you don’t want to achieve less. Or something like that, I sense over-simplification.

Deep down I think that this is all the rantings of an over-privileged straight white male, clearly sitting in the societal elite by default. So in protest  I rail against it and try and earn it, through merit.  I try and establish a yardstick of accomplishment, but end up not really caring about it because it’s only measured against my projected ideas and self. It’s subjective.

I try and have-not as much as I can because I don’t feel I deserve what I have, which is also completely subjective. I only know that for me it’s much easier to tell myself I don’t deserve things, it seems more fitting.

The kicker is that I have it though, and I get to decide with what to do with it.

I take a deep breath, exhale, and quiet the chatter. The best I feel I can do is listen and keep and open mind.

My open mind tells me to live in the present, and be eternally grateful.