"Satisfaction"

"When I'm drivin' in my car, and the man come on the radio
He's tellin me more and more about some useless information
Supposed to fire my imagination."


This is a follow-up to my previous post (See "Orange Crush").


It's so easy to get caught up in the material things, isn't it? There's always something we've got to have; Always some updated version of something we currently own; "a new version of the old scene". Be they toys and trinkets, software or hardware, cars, tools, houses, jobs, friends, or lovers, we always want what's new and what's fresh.
But do we really need these things? I think not. In fact I am thoroughly convinced that if, on this very day, production of all marketable material non-essentials ceased forevermore, we would be able to survive just fine. But do I want to live in that kind of world? Not on your life!
C'mon! I'm sure that you feel the same way! Deep down, you know that you can live without the next season fashion line-up, or Playstation 4, or some new rims for your car (err... ride), or the seventh season of "24" (well, YOU might be able to). But do you want to? If tomorrow they announced that there was no longer going to be new stuff ever for everything, would everyone just shrug it off and carry on with daily life. Probably not (and if you can "then, mister, you're a better man than I")
So, I've established that we are an insatiable, materialistic, impatient race. What am I getting at here?

We, as a society, will never be able to completely rid ourselves of this hunger for more bigger and better things. It is in our nature so why should we fight it? That being said, I am not encouraging you to continue to "walk this way". What we can do is decide which things are truly important to us and deserve our attention most. This includes things we don't want or don't want to do (ie: pay bills, go to work, buying a new fridge to replace your broken one, chores, etc...).
People, especially youth, spend so much money and time on things they don't really want or shouldn't really matter. We spend on a whim and, before we know it, a month has gone by and we're nearly broke with a pile of stuff that we'll never touch again. Sure, there are a lot of spoiled youths out there who waste their time and money when they could be putting at least a little of it away for a rainy day. But how many adults do you know act the same way?
As we grow older, we are supposed to grow wiser; appreciate the finer things in life. However, in this sense, the change is rather static. Instead of learning how to control themselves, adults find that, since many of them are making far more money than what they were making in their earlier years, they have more money to spend on useless stuff. What they may not realize is that, adulthood, with all the extra responsibilities that adolecencse lacks, gives us far less time to ourselves and our leisurely activities. Yet, if we take a few steps back and look at our lives, we find that we manage to spend an unreal amount of time devoted to ourselves and the spoils we've acquired. It seems that rather than age and experience teaching us that we need to moderate how we spend our time and money, we remain just as reckless, if not more so, as we were in the days of our youth.

So far, we've covered the material things; things you can buy and own. But, what about the things that can't be bought? The things of much higher value such as trust between family and friends or requited love?
Trust is one of the most difficult things to acquire from another person. It may perhaps be harder to acquire than whatever treasures you may consider valuable (material things). Yet, once we've gained the trust of someone, even if that someone is an important person in our life, we are so quick to cast it aside to satisfy our personal "needs" ranging from advancement in the workplace to relieving one's self of guilt to acquiring material things to satisfying one's sexual urges; the list is endless. In many cases, after the trust has been betrayed, one often feels remorse and longs to gain that trust back. In other cases, sadly enough, people don't realize the true value of what they've lost. They believe that the satisfaction of ones personal wants outweighs the value of another's trust.

Yes, we are truly an unsatiable people, doing anything and giving everything to get what we want and not necessarily what we need. Be it to further our status, to keep our lives different and fresh, or just because it makes us "happy" for a short while, we will always persue the things we want. The elusive part of this is learning to put others before ourselves, deciding between what we need and what we want, and the moderation in the spending of our money and of our time. Much easier said than done, but it is an endeavor worth undertaking, however you feel would be the right way of doing it. I believe if we all adjusted our lives just a little we could that much more happy and satisfied and, really, isn't that what we've been after all this time?