Overall Time on Earth

We rush to much.
To the station, through the turnstile, all aboard.

We know better, I mean we complain about the stress the pace. There's segments on Good Morning America especially dedicated to helping viewers cope with the rush of life. Don't do too much, they insist, rest, vacate, vacation, focus, meditate, exercise, eat right, on and on. America is founded on this culture of self-help books of constant self-improvement founded on the assumption that we work too hard and run our lives at too quick a pace to actually live happily.

Yet we are terrified of true leisure. Stasis is anti-American. In the great climb up the social ladder, if we don't rush with the masses we won't make it. So our culture alternates between illness and cure. A catch 22: you MUST rush in order to "make it," so that you then have enough money to buy the therapy, pills, pilates classes and vacations necessary to rest and be happy. But then, if we weren't trying so hard, we'd be resting right? We be happy? Or would we sink into self-loathing watching our friends "make it" with SUV's and second homes as badges of misery, er, I mean success.

It's a factory of sadness.

Why try? Why not work as little as necessary to have food and shelter from cold and rain?

I guess what I'm struggling with is the constant need to have more. It feels juvenile. Not bound to an age group, though; after all, plenty of old folks still strive for more more more. It feels juvenile in a spiritual sense.

Here and now should be enough. Take a breath. Look around. What more do we REALLY need, and at what price?