Tom and Jerry

So I am doom-scrolling through the endless void of media that I live in and I come across one particularly galling headline from the one and only Vulture.com: “ Are You Watching the Justice League Snyder Cut or Tom and Jerry?”

Some days you wake up with your full heart set on making it a productive, pleasant, clear, hopeful day, and for whatever reason the brain disagrees. For whatever reason, no matter how many ice baths, early morning runs, green teas, be-your-own-boss courses, or sessions of mindful groin stretching, your head, and the entire reality it projects cannot break free of that aching buzz of discontentment. On these days the world which so often gleams with opportunity and beauty holds nothing but clutter, noise, rage, anxiety, and vulture articles about the Tom and Jerry reboot. Every little flaw, every moment of resentment, every soured and broken connection, human and material, reveals itself to you all at once. And suddenly you find yourself wondering if you have always felt this way and are just now noticing. By you I mean me. But what’s the difference anyway.

I become aware of the sheer, insurmountable clutter of the worlds we inhabit. I have a frantic desire to get away from it, to throw out everything, to uninstall every application, and to escape to some quiet patch of grass where nothing and no one can bother me. A moment of potent, truthful rest.

But it is inevitable: the pressure, the expectation, the debt, the guilt, and the doubt. At my age, there is the overwhelming notion that it is sink or swim time. Some friends of mine are breaking into the industries of their choosing, finding high paying jobs and embedding themselves as indispensable members of professional communities. Some are just college students, apathetic to their studies, drifting towards the inevitable graduation date and rude awakening. Some have yet to go to college and are taking their time to really figure out what this whole career thing is about. All of a sudden, it is clear who will be who, and where the lines will be drawn. Who will be successful? Who will be rich? Who will be poor? Who will be happy? Who will accomplish what they set out to do? Who will forget to try? Who will say they did and turn on the news?

In every article my eyes snap onto, in every dumb idea I try to set into motion, in every corner of our lives, it is all too obvious that the race has begun. The struggle, the clawing, the clamoring, the begging, the reaching, the wringing, the fighting, the stealing, the winning, the free-for-all-cut-throat-casino-lottery-crooked-back-ally-knife-fight for the accepted legal tender. Every moment of contentment, of rest, is invaded by that same toxic aspiration. A hobby is a side hustle, a profile is marketing, and a passion is a career; every worldly possession becomes a value unspent and an investment upon which you have already missed out. Every ounce of genuine human enjoyment, is relentlessly mined for monetary gain.

But this is nothing new, it’s just that some days you really notice.

All, the clutter and the noise comes from the struggle. The articles, and reboots, and tweets, and diet plans, and online courses, and advertisements, and phone games, and bitcoins, and everything else. Desperate attempts to find some modicum of success in a hopeless game. Let me give you a rather striking example. The email list for a meditation club I joined last year just sent me a flyer for “Conscious Entrepreneurship - What if a Monk Started a Business?” which I mean… come on!

And I don’t blame anyone, because I am doing it too. I don’t hate the plucky meditation enthusiast who is trying to draw some business students to his club for mindfulness and peace. I don’t resent my friends for finding success in their own careers. And to be honest, I don’t even hate the poor overworked columnist begging me to click on his article pitting a recut version of the Justice League against the Tom and Jerry movie, because they’re just trying to do their job. We all are. But what I am trying to say is that we are losing something along the way. A cool patch of grass to lay down on. A place, and a time to breathe with no motive for gain. I might like meditation but I’m really not interested in being an entrepreneur.

I am really not trying to make a political or economic point, and I am sure a thousand well dressed economists would disagree, but I’m just saying what I believe is true. This isn’t a zero sum game. It isn’t a game at all. There is no finish line to cross. No points to be won, not really. This world has so much more to offer us. There is enough. It doesn’t have to be like this.

And if I had to choose, I will most likely be watching the Tom and Jerry reboot because I don’t really like Zack Snyder’s interpretation of the DC Universe.