It’s Good to Be King

Here’s an interesting exercise… Go someplace relatively cheap, like a drug store or a gas station, and imagine yourself for a brief period a member of the local royalty and this store a part of your demense. Walk the aisles knowing that you own everything and anything you would like to take is already yours. Being royalty, you are incredibly sexy and you can also eat anything you like without fear of the repercussions.

There’s nothing like the face of a kid that’s been coveting a certain toy when he finally gets his hands on it. There is something primal in the act of having something physical to hold onto that satisfies a want that you have. As we age we learn that it is shallow to get pleasure from the acquisition of material goods. If you’re an intellectual or focus on your spirituality or develop your professional life, you start to focus your values in those places: you respect learning or inner peace or status. Simple materialism gets left behind as an artifact of childhood.

Or, if you’re like me, there’s always a little banker in the back of your head looking at every purchase and telling you that you don’t really need it and to just go on. For company there’s a peppy blonde in spandex telling you that any food you buy will make you fat and every so often she casts a disapproving look as if to say, “I’ll never sleep with you now, pudgy.”

Both the superiority and all the judgment cut into the experience. They add a layer of analysis that keeps you from being that five year old with the latest x-man action figure. There’s some satisfaction there, but it’s muted. At it’s worst, you just buy only what you need mechanically, letting the little banker and the little woman and whatever friends they have drive everything you do.

Screw that. Having and buying is fun. Enjoy it.

I went to a reunion recently where I hung out with some friends from college who were very focused on intellectualism and spirituality. While I was there, someone told me they heard that I’d become a hedonist. It was an interesting charge to counter. In the end I rationalized it a bit saying that I had always really wondered how the cool kids live. Saying, “Partying all the time? That doesn’t really interest me.” can be done from two very different places. If you say it and no one would want to go out with you, it takes some of the authenticity out of it. Being able to say it from a position where you have it as an option is very different.

I was quiet and uncomfortable at parties all through college. I could say that the lifestyle didn’t appeal to me, but that wasn’t true. I wanted to know how it worked. I wanted to know how to be cool. There was a little part of my self-esteem that was tied up in being ashamed of being a dork that I could never let go. I had two options. One: learn to accept who I am. Two: change myself. I opted for #2.

It sounds shallow. It sounds like I’m the protagonist in some cheesy ’80′s high school movie, abandoning some part of my identity to hang with the cool kids. Eventually I’ll end up cruel and jaded and look back on the genuineness of my former life with longing. It’s not like that though. Being a dork is not who I am any more than being cool is who I am. Hanging out in a bar or going to parties is mostly about learning a set of rules. It is knowing what behavior is appropriate. I no more abandoned some critical part of myself than if I’d gone to cotillion and learned which fork goes where and not to put my elbows on the table.

Who I am is a person who will not be ruled by my fears. I will not be afraid that it is shallow to nearly cream my pants when buying a teddy bear. I will not be afraid that I’m wasting my life when I go out to a bar on Friday night. I will not be afraid that I’m a loser when I tell my friends I want to stay home and code some night. Or rather I will be a little afraid and I will not let it drive me. That is the part of me that I stay true to and the part of me I didn’t sell out when I started partying.

It will change you. I can’t express the level of contentment that I felt sitting in the park eating a box of cookies last night. I bought them without looking at the price or the health information. Doing it and just doing it without analyzing the hell out of it is the difference in watching a sunset with someone you love and watching the same sunset having just learned your dad died. It isn’t just the experience, it is who you are going into the experience that really matters.

Another conversation that I had at the reunion was on spirituality. It was about responsibility. Most spiritual people agree that we have some fundamental connection to other people and a responsibility to do good that arises from that. If you’ve not read the story “Beggars in Spain,” I recommend it. The title comes from one of the characters discussing being in Spain and a homeless person comes to her looking for some money. She is compassionate, so she gives them a dollar. Then another comes and to be fair she gives them one as well. Slowly the awareness of free money spreads through the population and she is mobbed by poor people looking for a handout.

I spent $20 last night on beers. I could have stayed home and written a check to Oxfam for $20 and helped some kid from getting malaria. I’ve been to Africa. I’ve seen the difference that a little change can make. In a very real way I choose last night to let some kid die so I could get crunk. I’m pretty cool with that. Everyone has to make the choice at some point to stop giving and have something for themselves. It brings to mind the quote from Rabbi Hillel: “If I am not for myself, then who will be for me? And if I am only for myself, what am I? And if not now, when?”

The question then was, “How do you know when you’ve done enough?” How, when I say, “I’m choosing to use this $20 on me and my pleasure rather than trying to help someone else,” do I know that I’m not being shallow and selfish? In short: you don’t. You do the best you can and that’s all you can do. No one else gets to live your life for you. You have to make the calls and you have to live with being the person that you choose to become. No book can tell you how to do it right. No guru can make the wise decisions for you. You’re in charge: welcome to adulthood.

I want to cover a couple of things I am not saying…

I am not saying that you should be a hedonist. I’m not saying you ought to go out and buy whatever you want because it makes you happy. What I am saying is learn to get all the little decision makers in your head to be quiet once in a while and simply savor the moment. The little guys will drive you both ways. During my brief reign as King of the CVS last night I found that there were several things that I didn’t want. My first impulse was to go mad, like a kid in a candy shop, just wander the aisles filling my arms with whatever random stuff I could lay my hands on. After a while though that impulse passed. It is borne in part on the knowledge that this is a one time thing and I want to cram as much consuming in as I can into the moment. That’s not the nature of the game though. When I settled into really being King and not just King for a Day, the greed faded away. I didn’t need to stuff my face with everything I could lay my hands on. That’d just make me sick and spoil my enjoyment. These things were mine and there was no need to stockpile against scarcity in the future. I eventually picked out only a couple things because honestly there were only a couple things that I really wanted.

I am also not saying that happiness can be bought. Materialism is not a replacement for friends or spirituality or professional standing. All that I’m saying is that cutting away the analysis that is often layered over our experiences makes then cleaner and orders of magnitude more fulfilling. Shopping, for me, is one of those activities where I let a lot of thinking get in the way of experience.

I’m not saying that you should just do whatever you feel like and not think about the consequences. The CVS was a good kingdom for me because, honestly, even if I go crazy, I’m not going to blow more than $50. The point is about learning what it feels like to turn the analysis off. As you get better at it then you learn the separate out the different voices and either choose to do what they say or not. Then, when you do what you’ve decided to do, you can let them go and get into what you’re doing.

Something I think it is important to keep in mind is a paradox brought about by time: you matter simultaneously immensely and not at all.

While I was back in Cookeville, I spent some time with an old friend. She told the story of how she went out with me and some friends in college and while there, she met a guy. Love happened and that guy is now her husband. What if it was me that asked her to come along? What if I’d decided to stay in that night? They could never have met. Someday their granddaughter might be president or cure cancer and that person will exist in a very small way because I existed. Our lives touch so many others in so many ways, and as time plays it out, everything we do alters the tapestry of the world in ways we can’t even imagine.

As you’ve been reading this; children starved to death, women were raped and men killed. Someone risked their live to help someone else, someone stole something and someone met the person they will marry. The world is hugely complex and there is only so much that you can do. If you find yourself getting caught up in the importance of the work you are doing and the sacrifices you are making, know that if you get hit by a bus tomorrow, the world would deal. If you’re like most people, only about a dozen people would really care that you were gone. Know this and relish the freedom that it gives you to experiment with your life.

You’ve got this one little life to live. Trillions or people have tried to live a good life through the course of history. Will you manage to do something that no one ever did before? Probably not really. You can though relish and savor the unique creation that is your personal experience of the world. Try being the King of a CVS and pay attention to those little voices that can get in the way of really living.