“Play the Game, Stay Hungry”: Endless Dissatisfaction

I’m particularly angry these days. Maybe more frustrated. Certainly exhausted. The way we treat each other, the utter lack of compassion, the ease at which we fling shit at each other and expect flowers to grow; none of it makes sense to me anymore. I have lost the energy to work and only have it in me to write and study eastern metaphysics.

I’ve recently performed a Tedx talk entitled Desire Compassion, covering the need to deeply care for others, how, and why. It will be released at some point. Some of the other presentations involved a tiresome egotism that I can no longer stomach. How to succeed in the corporate world, how to find a way to satisfy those who own a majority portion of your energy, to make your superiors give you that smirk of approval. It felt like an eternal linkedin hell to sit through – no disrespect, as I did try to keep good spirits during that day. It is not our fault for trying to prop up these ideas because we are living off the essence of a system unanalyzed and tolerated.

Eternal Hunger is Unending Dissatisfaction

I often hear this idea of “show up hungry”, “stay hungry”, the perspective that asks you to keep on desiring success, worldly recognition and reward.

Hunger – when it comes to food – is an undesirable state that we’re constantly avoiding. We say “god I’m so hungry I can’t even think.” We eat and after a few hours we have to tend to it again. Hunger is a cyclically recurring impulse that keeps you in its grasp. Become hungry, eat to satisfy, become hungry again, repeat. This cycle has been spearheaded as a virtue in the corporate and/or entrepreneurial environment, where one is actually encouraged to want more. Arrive frothing at the mouth for some potential “more.” More of what you ask? financial gain, notoriety, respect through productivity, and so on. Just like the hunger for food, this hunger is of the nature of insatiability. When you see the world as an endless chase – or hunger – you become an unending dissatisfaction. And how would you expect others to feel around you in this state?

Regular Worker Is a Toilet Component

I conceive the regular worker, making enough to survive but completely demotivated by the nature of his daily tasks and the uncaring nature of his surroundings as sitting with his mouth agape at the receiving end of a toilet flush hole. Well Anthony, “if you work hard enough, you get to be that superior!” And then what? Is it my turn to transform someone’s life into a set of tasks which I no longer wish to carry out myself? Why must I live with the assumption that I should be “superior” to another? It is like the tenant who becomes the landlord, thinking he has escaped the cycle by putting another in his place. Not to worry, the cycle is pristinely preserved, only he has put another on the boiler.

Here’s Your Desk

How is it so much of progression through one’s “career” is an introduction of a new screen, table, wires, and a chair that others have endlessly farted in, where we sit to perform tasks we would ultimately never desire doing otherwise? Every once in a while we get this time-bound, limited adventure that makes it seem “all worth it.” It isn’t.

What about time with our family or struggling friends who need us? In an emergency situation, our options are to use vacation time, consume unpaid leave as we’ve already depleted our vacation, or quit – all of these bring some level of grief to those who must fill in our place. On top of this we learn to feel ashamed to ask for help, because we live in this apparently seamless world of endless work where the only challenges are how to get the task done while human suffering and mental anguish is on some invisible and impossible horizon. What kind of absolute nonsense is this? 

If the seed of productivity is a mind at ease, where is the opportunity for this to be found in our work culture? The very culture is a contradiction to its goals.

Nine-to-five till Ninety-Five

What about those whose inherent abilities do not align with consumer culture and market drives? Where does the heart of a young archeologist, musician, or painter turn to if the current state of the market doesn’t have a home for him? Market allows a skill only if there is a demand, but if one is born with a talent that the times does not appreciate, he will suffer tremendously in his life.

What if his parents pushed him away from his natural desires at the prospect of financial stability, as if mental instability wouldn’t be the obvious consequence? He must grind on through mediocrity in hopes his body will last long enough to be able to afford to explore his ability. By then the hair is lost, the tooth is long, and the will is gone.

“Well Anthony, just work your 9-5 and then go home and work on your side hustle.” Nonsense. Horseshit. Is it really human destiny to only experience the glories of its own potential in the short window of time outside these hours? We miss the beauty of the sun as it filters through windows, begging us to soak it up while we send trifling emails involving trifling subject matter. We sit in the hum of air conditioning and air filters, much like we maintain plants, mostly to satisfy the observer.

Work is Essential

There’s nothing wrong with work. A strong will to produce for this world and the systems that keep it running is not the issue. My question is, when does this system turn a considerate, supporting hand towards us who have given so much? I have yet to speak to a person who has not been mentally or physically decimated by their work.

I laugh when I recollect at the profundity of this excerpt from Zhuangzi

However, a man who loves horses even to the point of gathering their shit and piss in jeweled boxes may still get his skull or chest kicked in if he smacks away a mosquito on the unbridled animal at the wrong time. Despite the best intentions, his solicitousness backfires on him.

Zhuangzi

How many of us clean up the mess of our superiors, work tirelessly through their desires, only to be insulted, mistreated, shouted at, and demeaned?

Causes of Infinite Misery

I have seen mere words and basic injurious deeds accumulate over time to kill people, some mentally, some physically. For this reason I no longer view my sensitivity to be a weakness; it is insensitivity which brings on the infinite miseries. I have seen people die by words and deeds; it is a phenomena as pervasive a fact as the existence of space itself. How can I unsee it? How can I take a man seriously who does not know this? Is the man in a suit to be considered mature for being able to afford it, and is the farmer for knowing how to grow corn? In my view man without compassion as his primary aim is an endless source of suffering, regardless of his outfit or accrued knowledge, ability and respect.

My mother didn’t kill herself because she couldn’t find meaningful work, nor did meaningful work save her. She died because she accumulated the effects of pain over time. Over time, she became corrupted by inflicted pain and later became a source of pain, hurting others, including myself. In a final, terrible end, the guilt of her own actions built up to an insupportable weight that took her over.

Hear this clearly. Each action or cause leaves an endless, unlimited set of effects that manifest through unpredictable spans of time, starting from the causal instant, to the infinite time beyond it. When the day comes and the ultimate accumulated effect takes place, when a person takes their own life, the entire causal sequence appears in a very obvious fashion – the unloving words over time, the insults over time, the injurious statements made by people we trusted with our love over time, the time given to those who leave us unappreciated over time, the infidelity over time, the frightening body horror we have witnessed over time, the cries of terror that we cannot shake from our mind over time.

The Genius of Patanjali 

Patanjali made it clear in his Yoga Sutras

The obstructions are violence in action and word, untruthfulness, stealing, lack of self control, etc. These manifest by directly committed actions, actions caused, or actions approved, and occur either through selfish desire, anger, or ignorance; each of these has a magnitude of effect classified as slight, middling, or great, and (through the multiplication of all these alternatives) the result is innumerable miseries.

Sadhana Pada 2.34; Patanjali’s Yoga Sutras

When will we learn that the stupid game of worldly success should come second to recovering our collective minds from all the endless effects of suffering that have reached us? Never has a child desired more than love; and without love, the child eventually goes on desiring material replacements. The growing infatuation with the material world, the endless consumption of that which dulls us, is a symptom of the ignorance of the limited nature of objects, and irregular and insufficient displays of love.

End the Effects

The unfortunate ones who carry the curse of pain to those around him are either conscious agents of evil, or unconscious ones. In either case, wake up, and put an end to the effects that have been thrust upon you by the history of your lineage. Quieten all the causal agents of your pain. Help for the sake of your limited time here, and for the ones who will follow.