what you going to do about me/ part 2/ draft 1

what you going to do about me/ part 2

reflections on "black Friday"

fiction
Edward w Pritchard

How many conveniences and comforts of modern life do we need to be happy?

Do our wants or our needs drive us to work and acquire the comforts of modern life? Number and sort out your needs as compared to your wants. Categorize how our wants confine us to adopt certain choices, choices that in aggregate direct how we live our lives. Civilized habits can be expensive to acquire and time consuming to maintain. A proper education, striking appearance, remarkable first impressions, a fully furnished nest, and then recreation and escape are paid for by our time, labor, and limitations on our freedom to be ourselves.

Given a choice most of us would prefer to have a car to drive if we want to go anywhere. It's a form of freedom to move about the landscape we inhabit. A horse and wagon work to move us about the place we live in but it is no longer a practical option to drive about in a horse drawn cart. Civilized habits require us to own an appropriate car.

As soon as we have the luxury of owning a usable car we begin to take drives to escape from ourselves. We need to escape from ourselves because our nest, our house, the place we live in and store our things in can confine and overwhelm us at times. Civilized habits require us to own or rent a proper house.

To maintain our house and car civilized habits require we own certain tools and accouterments to maintain and defend our major possessions. Lawnmowers, tool chests and leaf blowers are stored in a garage or tool shed along side our house. Garages and tool shed must be insured and defended from thieves.

Sometimes it's too much trouble for some of us to maintain our life style. We might become vaguely unhappy without understanding why. We acquire books and entertainments to return our happiness. Large cable ready TV's, internet connected cell phones, portable electronic devices to read books on and extended vacations abroad appear to distract us from our lives.

To what extent does your first choice of how to live you life confine your choices of how much freedom you have to be yourself? Do we have free will in our first choice of how to live our life?
How much complexity is necessary to live our lives properly, in a proper civilized manner?

  Just asking the question of how our choices effect our life is to lift our eyes toward the horizon that surrounds and confines us. What is beyond the invisible horizon that surrounds you?