What would happen,
If everyone strove to give more than they took?

Image by Ashwini Solanki from Pixabay

Having an aversion to working a ‘real job’ could be a net benefit in cases in which you’re looking to pursue an ‘alternative’ career – eg. an artistic endeavour with a much lower probability of success (eg. making a living), but with fame and higher financial rewards on the upside (music, acting, comedy, writing etc).

Put simply, it forces you to go ‘all in’. It does not allow you to get comfortable in a normal career.

However – it’s only a benefit to those with the talent and drive to pursue their art/high-risk, high-reward occupation. And even amongst those people, luck is a massive factor.

Which means you either succeed or fail spectacularly. You don’t get to live in ‘the middle’. To work in middle management, and live in a nice, middle-sized house, oh no…

As a glib example: you’re either a millionaire entertainer, raking in the royalties or you move from service job to service job, eking out a living whilst you work on your comedy until you die.

The deck is stacked against you, but if it’s what you’re called to, there is no other way, I suppose.

To me, this is the life of the artist – no compromise. All or nothing.

Photo by Free-Photos (Pixabay)

We don’t value people
(As much as I feel we should)
Because we have ‘too much access’ to people.

This is something of a supply and demand issue.

As a general principle
We tend to value less which is more abundant
And this can apply to people.

Example:
You’d probably be much happier to see another person
After spending a year alone in the wilderness
Than you’d be
Spending yet another day (another year?)
Fighting through the crowds at your metro station

If there were less of us, maybe we’d value each other more.

Though seeing as this is probably not going to happen any time soon
We should come up with better ways to value each other
Ways that take into account how many of us that there are now.

Put another way
Come up with a way not to dehumanise people
Considering how many people there are.

The current MO is to treasure a small group of people 
And look on at everyone else with some degree of ambiguity or neutrality.

So,
Are there ways of valuing everyone equally without the ‘us and them’ mentality?
In other words – can we think of everyone as part of our ‘in-group’?
I don’t know.

Perhaps imagine that one of those people
In the teeming mass of humanity that surrounds you
Is the only person that you have seen in the last 10 years?