A few weeks ago, me and a friend were talking life over yuka and Crisp & Juicy. Let me set the picture for you: Outdoor seating, clouds were shy but the sun was smiling, and the air carried a breeze about as cool the other side of the pillow on a water bed. Niiice. Now I'm not sure what led to it, but somewhere between garlic sauce dipping and finger licking, the concept of being "real" became discussion. "Most people bore and depress me because they aren't real" is what I said. From there, we argued back and forth over the true meaning of the term. Eating food and chewing thoughts untill our bellies filled and our patience grew fed up with one another. And as always, the conversation went nowhere and we sat sneering at each other -disgusted of each other's stubborness and dissapointed in our selves' inability to persuade the other. Yes, one of those types of friendships. So as our poultry laden verbal exchange drew to a close, a middle aged woman, in apron and on nicotine, walked up to our table and complimented my friend on her handbag. The purse was Burberry. One of those obnoxiously printed bags that are otherwise no more better than say an "Aldo" bag if it weren't for the infamous Burberry print.
"I wanted to get one just like it!" she says. "It's soo beautifull!!!
This was really funny to me at the time because the broad really did come out of nowhere! On some ninja status type of ish. [Wataahh!!] My beef with this though (last food reference -I promise!) isn't with the bag being Burberry. The tone behind her words got me thinking. It's the way the woman said what she said that irked me. This lady didn't want the bag because it was actually that beautiful. She wanted it because, to her, it would mean to be something more than "just a waitress". It would mean to be like those people she would regulalry see with designer product: Confident in their step and seemingly content with life. Apron-less. The greener grass. The happier category.
Trouble is we as people often mistake things like happyness, confidence, and true security, all things inner, with the outside -the material. When we can't concretely define the abstract thing we desire, we seek out the material objects we associate with it. People hide behind various fronts to aquire happyness, or at least some resemblence of it. At the end of the day, and after clock-out, it all comes down to one thing though: PURPOSE!!!
Human beings CANNOT function properly without PURPOSE. Those who have NO purpose either commit suicide, succumb to chemical dependency, naiively devote their body and soul to some other selfishly leech-like individual (I'm looking at you dead-beat dads), spend the rest of their days seeking purpose, or adapt by hiding behind all sorts of superficialities. Fragile is the ego's belly, but swift is it's relentlesness to self-preserve; driving us to treat it with the nearest sacharin. That's all these things we hide behind are for: temporary happyness. Sugar highs! The women we men hide behind and objectify, the "locker-room" talks we share like trophies, the watches we buy, the fights we masculinize ourselves through, the creatine we chug, the sex women offer in subsitute of personal value, the color contacts, the billboard sized logo on the clothes we wear: all UNSUBSTANTIAL fill-ins for the deeper void we avoid to properly address!!!..Don't get me wrong, there is nothing wrong with a little ego-boost. Unless it's at the expense of some poor sap. But a boost is exactly that! Just a boost. It is not fulfillment.
Most things occuring in the world today comes back to our natural human condition to gain or maintain an identity. And to have an identity is to have......what else but purpose! [I think you're getting the theme of the song by now riiight?? lol]. The two go hand-in-hand. This notion spans beyond individuals though. This applies to collectives as well. It is just how the world workssss. Nothing, be it negative or positive, can thrive and flourish without purpose. From Al-Qaeda, to Red Cross. From The NAACP to the KKK. Your current president is in the process of establishing a more effective, if not friendlier, identity for the U.S. amongst the international community. That is his purpose. One of them. These are all results of people finding a purpose and running with it. What you choose to do with that resolve gained in having direction, however, is completely up to you. You can either help build something or take away from something. The in-betweeners will be forever forgotten.
Can i tell you that I love it when I step into a pair of beautiful new kicks? I LOVE shoes. They keep my feet safe, comfortable, and looking damn goood on the way to where I gotta go!!! A huge part of that happyness, though, comes from knowing that it's not because I haven't anything more substantial to be proud of. I love shoes but I love loving them for the right reasons even more! I KNOW what I want from life. I know that there is a difference between egotism and self-love. I know what I love and what I would like to do in life. I hope YOU do as well. It's never about how long you live, it's about what you do with the time you're given. You've heard that right? Though cliche as hell, that saying is sooo true! It was never about your Jordans or your Louis Vuitton bags. It always has and always will be about purpose and how the fullfillment of that purpose affected those around you.
Rant over.
Peace & Love.
-Rocky
