Progression Depression
The leaves are crackling frigid under my foot on the way in to my morning retreat, a hard plastic table made of recycled cap guns and skateboard bearings, I presume. Friendship park, a 100-yard long park, maybe 40 feet wide, with man-made rolling hills like turtle shells burried and planted over, benches line a winding pavement line that cuts from one end to the other, and those leaves all sit to the north half of the park, getting themselves as far away from the sickly and dying that is the hospital across the street.
A sign reads “Friendship is a Passive Park – No Sports” and another “No dogs allowed”, signs which made me laugh in defiance as I watched the frisbee players run through the dog shit but now, the park emptied for the coming Winter, just compound the crusty irrelevance of human life to human progression.
A man pulls up in a Porsche, waiting his long-in-line turn to park for the day. He’s wearing a thick, golden-buttoned overcoat and is looking quite burned out. He’s worked his way to the top, no doubt, possibly to escape the poverty of his born-into childhood. Look at his swagger, the lack of a bounce in his step carefully crafted to squash his enemy, ensuring his continual movement to the highest rung on the ladder. He makes $160,000 a year and never has a chance to spend it.
Or so I think, maybe just wondering, why do we continually progress the human race only to give us less time to actually partake of the human race? Sure, at some point we were all tending our own farms and working dawn to dusk, and human advancement allowed someone, at some point, to only work a few hours and enjoy the life around them. But we broke the curve and now we’re all attempting to progress to what end? What satisfaction does it culminate in?
If I were the type to make Newish Year resolutions, I’d say that I will work only three days a week next year, exist meagerly and humbly, and smile all the while…
And have more cheese on crackers. And ride more bikes for fun, not just transportation. And hang out with friends even when beer isn’t involved. And wear no pants before noon. And more cheese on crackers.
Up Next: The Girl in the Tree