Mea culpa
I feel broken sometimes, like I’m missing something vital that everyone else sees, like there’s an atmosphere that everyone else can breathe. There’s a disconnect between me and many of my friends and countrymen: frankly, I just can’t get that much excitement about the acquisition of more material objects, more stuff. There was a time when I was proud of this, when I was a brash teenager, as a mark of difference. Now I just feel like an astronaut on a foreign planet.
It’s not that I can’t enjoy material experiences deeply. I love going to a café for an espresso, lounging, talking, writing in my journal. I love going to a good restaurant and tasting something I’ve never tasted before. And I love traveling, seeing a different piece of earth (or an old one from a new viewpoint), and heaven knows I’ve spent more on such trips that maybe I should have. So I ain’t no saint. Indeed, some might cynically say I just have a rather elitist set of material wants compared with other Americans. And maybe that’s true. The problem is that for many of the things in the world that I want I don’t really lust after them all that strongly: I don’t mind if my clothes have holes in the them, or are from Filene’s Basement; I don’t mind having a car whose side is covered with dents; I don’t really mind living in a smallish 1-bedroom apartment with my wife.
And so as I’ve entered the adult world, where we all are supposed to strive for a continually expanding set of “necessary” material goods, I feel estranged. In comparison with this radiant, bright world, without shadow, I seem bitter or just silly. A friend has suggested that I’m this obstinate because I came from a decently well-off family, and so have never developed that innerving fear of poverty. Perhaps this is true, although I’m not sure why this fact should imply that the other path is more primary.
To me, money has always seemed like a necessary evil, something you have to ransom your time to obtain. Thus spending money for me is often downright painful, as it just makes me ransom more time away, and often that bargain doesn’t seem worth it. And I know that this makes me a cheapskate, I admit it, I won’t argue with the world anymore about it. But I want everyone who reads this to know that that’s who I am. Perhaps I feel ashamed now of it, but I am what I am. If I only could find the words to communicate how strongly this is inbred within me, how glorious it feels to break away from the spell of it and try to purchase my own soul instead of some thing…
