In
this same way every one of those who walks out to swell the crowd in the
streets is led around the city by worthless and empty reasons.
The
dawn drives him forth, although he has nothing to do, and after he has pushed
his way into many men's doors, and saluted their nomenclators one after the
other, and been turned away from many others, he finds that the most difficult
person of all to find at home is himself.
From
this evil habit comes that worst of all vices, tale-bearing and prying into
public and private secrets, and the knowledge of many things which it is neither
safe to tell nor safe to listen to.
I still think
with dread of all the years I spent getting up in the morning, putting on the
clothes someone else told me I needed to wear, and getting myself onto a small
metal tube to go where I was told to go. It was packed with hundreds of folks
who were on the same mission.
Once I
got to where I had been told me to go, I then spent the rest of the day bothering
other people. Sometimes I was asked to beg from them, and at other times I was told
to yell at them, and, on a few occasions, I was supposed to sign a form or
punch a button, and this apparently made everyone happy.
I had to
be very careful. If I yelled at the person I should be begging from, or begged
from the person I should be yelling at, there would be trouble. There were
reprimands, and probations, and double-secret probations. There was an HR
person who delivered little multi-colored slips every morning, to tell us how we
had all failed.
Through
it all, I had to smile and play nice with an important fat fellow in the office
down the hall. If his mood was poor, I had to cheer him up, or he would erase
my existence. If his mood was good, I was still cheerful, in the hope that a
few extra numbers would show up in my bank account at the end of the week.
Then I
got back on the small metal tube, which usually broke down around this time,
and when I finally made it to my tiny wooden box, barely paid for by those
numbers in my bank account, I would sigh and complain to the wife. She had gone
through much the same as me, though she drove the smaller metal box that her
owners were generous enough to barely help her pay for.
We
sighed and complained together, and we fell asleep, and our chirping alarms
woke us again the next morning to repeat the cycle.
I know
that I am a hopeless romantic, but this is not a way to live, not even for the
most thoughtless or insensitive person. It is a living hell.
What was
the job, you may ask? It was most every job I ever had, whether as a pencil
pusher, or as a programmer, or even as a fancy teacher. It is also most every
job you have ever had.
Search
your feelings. You know it to be true.
The
waste was never in the effort, or in the striving, or in the sacrifice. The
waste was in the action without purpose. Let there, by all means, be small
metal tubes and even smaller metal boxes. Let there be tiny wooden boxes. Let
there be struggle, but please Lord, let there actually be some meaning to it. The
numbers come into the bank account, and then they leave more quickly, and often
there is a negative sign before the numbers. Then there is death.
It all
keeps what we call the “economy” going. It is all for the best, apparently, so
we can all be sad together, owing money for our little metal boxes and tiny
wooden boxes.
Again,
not a way to live.
With no
human purpose, and all labor involved in busywork, it’s no wonder we die on the
inside.
What
else is left but to poke our noses into the lives of others, to gossip, to
slander, to condemn? There is much planning, quite a bit of managing, and
hardly any doing. Ask yourself how few fine people actually produce anything,
and then compare that number to the dazed people who spend their entire lives
bossing other people around.
Search
your feelings. You know it to be true.
Written in 12/2011
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