Wanting & Capitalism

Is Capitalism keeping us trapped in our own comfort?

In a previous piece (below), I discussed my magical ability to find fortunes. I should clarify, perhaps, that I mean “magic” in the tongue-in-cheek sense. If you start looking for things, you inevitably find them. It’s more about paying attention than super-strength. It’s not just fortunes; I’ve found many interesting things: books, (salt) lamps, worry dolls, precious stones, a basketball, plants (including a monstera), clothing, shoes, etc. That was all in the last seven months! 

A Short Meditation On Fortune (Cookies)

If you pay attention, you can find anything - just don’t look for it. The surest way to never find something is to always look for it.

This is one of those Taoist truisms that sounds like BS but is certainly true. Or perhaps you’ll find it, but you’ll be all the more unsatisfied with your achievement.

Certainly, you must seek out the things you need; how else do you have them?

First, ask yourself if you need it or only want it. Something you need will always be given to you. It’s karma, or the universe, or time is a flat circle.

But if you only want it, you’ll lose it, or it will cost you—karmically, at least. You might not know for a while (check back in a few lifetimes).

Sometimes, you might need something, but you approach it from within samsara, i.e., you are attached to it, and you want it. Samsara is the wheel of life and death, in which our karma (attachments) keeps us bound to relive our mistakes until we grow and free ourselves from them.

The universe wants you to have it, but you are too early or somehow perpetuating suffering. Everything is perfect; if only we’d just let go. When we stop trying to have the life we want, we get one a thousand times better.

But alas, we jump the gun, take the mostly perfect option, and trap ourselves in another cycle of suffering.

A story comes to mind. I needed a pen. I chose a Fisher Astronaut pen. It’s versatile (it writes upside down), sleek, natural (it takes a patina), and indestructible. It’s the best pen; I wrote this (originally) with it. Why you may ask?

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I have a worldview: Don’t buy tons of shitty things.

Uniqlo clothing, boots, Jeans, pens, cups, hats, etc. Buy “the one,” reuse it, and fix it up until it dies or you do. This isn’t rocket science; it’s just minimalism.

I had this realization with pants recently. I’ve been buying junky Uniqlo slacks for years. Inevitably the crotch or ass gets blown out (or perhaps this says something about my lifestyle, but I don’t have the emotional strength to delve that deep without my therapist present), and then you have to go buy another pair about 1 year later.

Meanwhile, you can buy one slightly expensive pair of nice jeans (or higher quality chinos), and they will last you years despite treating them like shit. I got turned onto the Japanese clothing company orSlow and despite buying a used pair of jeans on Vinted that seem to have been in the rotation for years based on the wear on the tag, it seems quite likely these jeans will outlast me.

Some artisan or lineage companies out there still make incredible, high-quality goods with real materials. They support these goods with a long (hopefully lifetime) warranty.

If there isn’t a company out there making the goods you want with high-quality materials and construction, you should start that company. Real products made right all the way down to the fibers will never go out of style and are emblematic of everything broken with modern capitalism.

We don’t make goods anymore! We make junk. That’s exactly what’s wrong with <this country> (insert country here)! Real goods have a soul like we do. They age, they change, they have stories, they have scars, they meet your grandkids, they don’t bend over and break with a medium-strength breeze.

Now that that’s off my chest…

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What’s wrong with Modern Capitalism?

So, I bought my pen, but I got it from Amazon. That’s a big no-no, karmically. Sure, use Amazon to buy your dog food or some hard-to-find book (okay, or ask a local bookstore to order it and quit Amazon cold turkey; you are a better human than me).

You don’t go to Satan’s Discounter for your golden lute. Don’t use our evil overlord to buy something (gasp) REAL—something you’ll use forever and that will become a part of you. That would be like using a dating app to find the love of your life…

Ah! Therein lies the issue. Modern capitalism has fully commodified Life. We have sucked the soul out of the whole world. All in the name of comfort! (well, and profit, let’s not beat around the bush here). Mission Accomplished, we are all very comfortable - but what did it cost us?

Democracy, the climate, and perhaps life as we know it on Earth. But dammit- I can get a date and a new PS5 to my door and still never go outside of said door - within 24 hours. Now that’s living, baby.

It seems that catering to our every want is bad for society and is leading to the downfall of the human species.

I’d wager it is.

If we gave up comfort a little, we’d find life. Just waiting for us, just barely out of reach. We’d find stories, just waiting for us to write them. Adventures outside our doorstep. The literal life of our dreams. If we could only be bothered to put down our phones.

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Back to the pen…

So I bought the perfect pen from Amazon, only to lose it two days later. It was not perfect enough to let it slip right through my fingers (metaphorically, it actually fell out of my pants).

All of life is like this: We want the perfect thing, we get it, and then we immediately lose it or become unhappy. Our desire keeps us from realizing we already have everything.

Samsara only exists because we keep turning the wheel ourselves. Sure, that sounds like a platitude.

Practically, the next time you are pursuing a something- a physical object (clothing, books, electronics, what have you), a person (for a relationship or a friendship), a job, or an experience you want to have-

Simply watch yourself- why do you want it? Why do you need it? What emotions come up? How do you feel when you attain it (or when you lose it)? Try to detach (as much as you can) and simply watch. Just come back again and again to the habit of noticing. Try to trace it to its origination, to the root of the desire. And below that? Are you caught on it? Are you in a story? Are you here with me right now? Or are you in fantasyland? Theres no good or bad either way, simply come back to NOW.

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I was not deterred in my quest for a pen. My will was correct, and my intention was good, but I had wanted it immediately. I hadn’t been patient, and I hadn’t waited for circumstances to be correct.

After I lost the pen, I travelled with my parents around Europe, we went to fair Verona. I thought, “Here, I’ll find a pen just like Romeo found Juliet.”

I found a pen shop. A little hole-in-the-wall. The kind of place I’m surprised exists, glad too. It has probably been in the family for generations, passed from papa to son, while the neighborhood around them has slowly been turned into an outdoor luxury mall. Verona is, for all intents, a popular tourist destination and attracts many rich clientele. Now, this is a place to find a pen you’d keep, a pen with a story. Supporting a local business in the famous city of love double suicide Romeo & Juliet.

They only had two finishes of pens, and neither was the brass that I hoped to attain for the beautiful patina- Chrome (barf, all the aesthetic charm of a Cylon or a hospital) and Black Cherry (which was quite dark purple). Despite being a shade of purple (which is my color), I really had my heart set on the brass (the patina, I tell you!!). Also, I don’t like cherries. Alas, when we let go of what we want, we get the perfect one. I needed a pen. I didn’t want a pen. The pen was waiting for me.

Did it ever cross my mind what the finish was once I bought Ma Chér(r)ie? Once she was in my hands, I knew she was meant for me; it was a perfect match. She’s the best pen I’ve ever owned. She’s the only pen I need.

Months later, some of the coating has begun to peel off, and brass has begun to shine through from underneath. When we stop looking for the life of our dreams, we realize we had it all along…

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Afterword

I wrote this piece a month ago in my journal. I like it as a companion piece to the poem I shared last week. It touches on similar themes, but perhaps through a more practical, consumer-focused lens. I must admit, reading it again, it strikes me as very materialistic for someone trying to get rid of all of their physical belongings. I mentioned a pair of jeans in the post. I actually brought these jeans with me on my trip (foolishly), along with a handful of other “beloved” clothing.

"What is the Way?"

While denim is good in a city, it is no good when you are carrying it on your back. Last week, I found myself at a point where I decided my favorite wool scarf didn’t serve me anymore. It’s a wonderful scarf: it’s wool, it’s from Portugal, it’s thick and versatile. Too thick… the weather has been warming up, and it had been a draining day emotionally and physically. Being in constant physical pain can really put your needs in perspective. So I decided I needed to cut some weight. But to pull my scarf out of my bag, all my denim came out, too. I could easily put the stuff I still loved back in the bag, as I am my only judge. But somehow, to pull them all out at the same time, it felt like they all needed to go. It would be ignoring my intuition to keep them.

We had some good times though, didn’t we?

Keeping one or two favorite items when you are trying to live more minimalistically makes sense, especially if those items are of the type I describe in this post: made with quality and very reusable. The issue is if you are still holding onto those items, still calling them your favorite. If you are just using them and are ready to give them up whenever need be, then by all means use them as long as they serve you. But when emotional attachment begins to creep in, you have a problem. It doesn’t matter if you have 100 attachments or one attachment. You still have attachments. There’s no practical distance between one and 100.

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Are you saying we can’t have any attachments? 

Well, I’m saying it’s not a luxury I can personally afford currently. Ideally we should try to notice and hold our attachments with an open hand. Ready to let them go when the time is right. In the end, all of our attachments are just our suffering. That relationship that has gotten more and more toxic, but we keep digging in our heels refusing to let go. That old piano we are still keeping, even though we haven’t touched it in years, and we never have enough space for our daily yoga in our apartment. It isn’t heartless to let things go when the time is right. We should mourn what was. We should feel pain for the lives we won’t lead, the people we won’t spend them with. In the end though, we have to let it all go. The only one we are keeping in suffering is ourselves.

That’s the real tragedy of the human experience: Within each of us, we hold the keys to our own freedom, yet we refuse to open the door. Many of us will even willingly give up our freedom to someone else and ask them to free us. They can’t. Only you can. I can show you the door, but you must walk through it.

This is just a door, not the door. The door is more of a metaphor really.

I looked at all my clothes, and I knew the only reason I should keep them in my bag was because I was attached to them. They no longer served me. So I did the only thing I could: I threw them all in the donation bin. And when the bin said they accepted shoes, I threw in my Birkenstocks, too. It was actually emotionally challenging. These were clothes I would wear almost every day in the “real world.” But I put back on my bag and it was way lighter and I said, breathed a huge sigh of relief. Correct decision. 

When you live out of a backpack, you can’t have favorites. You need to survive. If I weren’t walking all day, I could wear jeans, mosey around cafes, and twirl my mustache. Unfortunately, my current (self-assigned) profession involves walking seven days a week.

We live in a material world. We should inspect how we interact with material things to see if we are attached to them. Although we will inevitably purchase things, we should try not to give in to consumerist impulses. Are we purchasing things we need or things we want? We should try to consume in balanced ways. We should try to consume local, well-made, long-lasting things. These could be food, clothing, relationships, jeans, pens, etc.

I would also recommend generally avoiding shopping areas. Something you realize when your mind is more clear: Walking through a commercial district will put wants into your head for you. There’s a story about Buddhist monks going to a shopping mall. Afterward, they say: “We never realized we wanted so many things!” We don’t realize the insidious effects of advertisements on our brains.

How terrible it is to buy things that we don’t even want. We might even be living a whole life only because we have been conditioned by society to believe we want it.

I dare you to find out what you really want!

That sounds like an ancient curse. Maybe it is?

Well then, I dare you to be happy too.