You know the drill.  This is the part about how it is the journey and not the destination.  How you are supposed to live in the moment, and appreciate what is because you never know when what is may completely change.  And of course change is what everybody fears.  This is why we cling to notions of forever after.   This is why we want a legacy.  This is why we scribble our names in graffiti.  But as the wise EDM British band Disclosure explain change is inevitable and as much as you like to be in your comfort zone everything changes.  Nothing stands still, from time to the movement of blood in your veins.  If your heart stops pumping you die in a matter of minutes.  Welcome to Earth.

The problem with this is that it creates a ‘not enough’ syndrome.  How far down can we dip our hand in the moving current before falling in and drowning?  I understand this.  I subscribe to over 40 podcasts.  I have hundreds of books and magazines that I will never get through.  I have a thousand albums I want to listen to more carefully but there is always a new one coming out that I have to also check out (or an old one, that rare gem on vinyl that only had 100 pressings.  You know).  Living in a world where everything is (seemingly) instantly at our fingertips creates a paradox of choice and therefore a huge unfulfilled distraction always just out of reach.

But it goes beyond this.  It goes into that place where things are never enough.  And this is unsettling.  It eats at you, where you want to feel like you’ve ‘made it’ and yet there is a new leg of the race yet again.  Worse, the illusion of the planet makes it seem as though everybody else has made it and you haven’t.  This divide runs deep.  The worse part about the ‘not enough’ feeling is that it can cause you to become something you are not without even realizing it.  There is a term for this.  It is called “chasing the hungry ghosts”.  This is where addictions come into play.  The old stand-by’s like drugs, alcohol, sex, food, coffee, video games, ect.  They fill the void.  It’s numbing when used in excess.  We now live in a world where we no longer have to battle a wooly mammoth at our cave door, or the black plague or rival nation heading on a cavalry over the hill but an enemy far less tangible but just as wicked. This is the enemy of belonging and uncertainty.  It forms in the wake of a rapidly moving photo shopped, overly-sharey (oh, hello blog) environment where tribes and niche is the latest saving grace in a world wide web of information overload.  We are trying to find our place in this web of classification and identification.  We don’t want to be left behind.

Even within these boxes we find ‘not enough’.  Perhaps you are a “nerd” but criticized for being ‘not enough’ nerd.  Or cool, but ‘not enough’ cool to make it into this blank of a blank whatever thing.  This is what happens when these things are created.  They try to become bigger than you.  And you are forced to try to fit into them.  And you don’t.  So then you get to float along feeling like this is your planet but not really.  When in reality this has been your blank canvas all along.  And this is the biggest issue of all in my opinion.  We as a society have come a long way from the highly bigoted, racist and sexist era of the 20th century and other times gone by but in our liberation we have created new categories that we wear in our badge of honor on our social media pages, and dating websites, and now of course we are still trying to remove the remainders of that racism and sexism and everything else biased too in a world that wants more than ever to give a title and category just with less constraint but actually more competition. 

The originality that has the potential to come forth in the future in the midst of all of this is going to be the result of a bunch of brave motherfuckers okay to exist in imperfection and uncertainty.  It will be those who can find beauty and strength in such a chaotic and always changing, rapid place.  This is where the mask can fall and truth can shine the brightest.