Rejoice! You have been born into a world of self-maintaining abundance and incredible beauty.

Ok, I’m just going to dump some stuff here like it’s 1998 and this is my livejournal.

I haven’t blogged in the last couple of days, despite my pledge to post every day, but sometimes there really isn’t enough time in a day. I could have posted something, but why post crap?

And that’s what I want to talk about today. Crap. Well, actually quality.

As I was singing JoJo songs at the top of my lungs on my commute this morning, I was thinking about how much I miss music. In a former life I considered myself a musician above all else. I had dreams of being a band teacher by day and symphony trumpeter at night. I changed my mind about that a long time ago, but I still love creating music.

But there isn’t time for that these days. Between 8 hour work days and commute times, and for some people – kids, parents, etc., who has time for any hobbies?

There was a time when the man would go to some job, and his wife would stay at home with the kids, yet they could afford a house and a vacation each year. Now, both the man and the wife (or wife and wife or husband and husband) go to work and they still can’t afford a house and a vacation. 40 hour work weeks have turned into 50, 60, 70 hour work weeks and weekends. The other day my neighbor was on call for her job…as a copywriter….at an ad agency. It was Sunday. They wanted her just in case someone decided they absolutely had to create an advertisement that day. What? What is that?

As I spend time deciding what I want my voice to be, what I want to do for a living, what I want my life to look like, I find myself continuously pushing back on the notion that I must work 24/7 in order to have a good life. I would like to have enough money to be comfortable, while still having nights and weekends to join a band or draw a picture or write a novel. I want to not get so stressed out about work that my chest gets tight. I get so worked up that I want to scream, WHAT IS WRONG WITH US, AMERICA???

My crush, the late Donella Meadows, once wrote a beautiful article called Just So Much and No More. Donella grapples with this same issue of a relentless economy, banging the drum beat of MORE MORE MORE. If you take the first sentence of each paragraph, it’s almost a poem:

The first commandment of economics is: Grow. Grow forever.
The first commandment of the Earth is: Enough. Just so much and no more.
Economics says: Compete. Only by pitting yourself against a worthy opponent will you perform efficiently.
The Earth says: Compete, yes, but keep your competition in bounds. Don’t annihilate. Take only what you need.
Economics says: Use it up fast. Don’t bother with repair; the sooner something wears out, the sooner you’ll buy another.
The Earth says: What’s the hurry? Take your time building soils, forests, coral reefs, mountains. Take centuries or millennia.
Economics discounts the future. Ten years from now, $2 will be worth $1.
The Earth says: Nonsense. Those invested dollars grow in value only if something worth buying grows, too.
The economic rule is: Do whatever makes sense in monetary terms.
The Earth says: Money measures nothing more than the relative power of some humans over other humans, and that power is puny compared with the power of the climate, the oceans, the uncounted multitudes of one-celled organisms that created the atmosphere, that recycle the waste, that have lasted for 3 billion years.
Economics says: Worry, struggle, be dissatisfied.
The Earth says: Rejoice! You have been born into a world of self-maintaining abundance and incredible beauty.

I want this tattoed all over my body.

I don’t think it’s too much to ask to be treated like my life is worth something. Like I have so much to give and no more and THAT’S OKAY. I may love the work that I do, but I also love my friends and my family and my hobbies and down time. In fact, I think the more balanced and happy you are, the better work you do when you are actually at work. So why do employers get increasingly stingy when it comes to things like vacation days and healthcare benefits and raises and retirement benefits? It all comes down to money and that makes me sick. I mean, I get it. I totally get it. But must we all run full speed toward an early death by heart attack?

Donella ends her article with these wise words:

We don’t get to choose which laws, those of the economy or those of the Earth, will ultimately prevail. We can choose which ones we will personally live under—and whether to make our economic laws consistent with planetary ones, or to find out what happens if we don’t.

Yikes, Donella. How do I personally live my values when the rest of the country is headed in the opposite direction? I think I’ll probably spend the rest of my life trying to do just that. I may have to revert to another dream from my youth, which was to live in a cabin in the woods like a hermit, spending each day reading and writing and kayaking and drinking tea and enjoying the silence.