Are We All Addicted To Drudge?

I have heard many people say that in order to be happy you must make money by doing something you love.  Back in the day that idea probably sounded insane.  The majority of people seemed to have to struggle just to get by with the work they could get, so who had the novelty of thinking about doing what they loved to do.  They did what they had to do to survive. But over the years, the opportunity to do what we love has become more realistic for a larger number of people.  I estimate that there are more people financing their lives through their own creative endeavors than ever in history.  In countries like the USA there are children growing up with parents who have been able to work from home, make money selling things online, write and create eBooks and apps and more while sitting in their swimming trunks.  I know I have intentions of going in that direction.  I want my work to be what I love and I don’t want to do something that I don’t enjoy in order to live a lifestyle that I don’t need.  But my question is, will that make me any happier? I don’t think so.

There are no menial jobs, only menial attitudes.–William Bennett

I think happiness is a choice people make that has surprisingly little to do with what people have or what they do.  I think conditional happiness is a big scam.  I know people who have the jobs or businesses that afford them the opportunity to do things that most of us could never see ourselves doing.  I know people born into wealth and I know people who have literally won the lottery, but can I tell you that these people are not always happy or even frequently happy.  No.  The best I can say is that what they have and do affords them more opportunities than the average person to distract themselves from how miserable they are otherwise.  I have no problem telling you that out of most of my friends I am on the lowest end of the financial spectrum, but I cannot say that any of them are happier than me.

Now does that mean I am going to support the BS belief that poor people are happier?  Heck no!  That is just something guilty wealthy people tell themselves.  My poor friends are just as unhappy as my wealthier friends.  It is just easier for them to point at what they think is bothering them.  I don’t know how many times I’ve heard poor people say things like “It will all be better if I just had more money” or my wealthier friends talk about the perils of lasting comfort.  Meanwhile some of the poor people will buy $200 sneakers and the wealthy people will go on a vacation that can finance a family of fifty in a poor country for a year while feeling guilty about being rich.  At the risk of offending people that I love, I have to say that it all sounds insane to me.  I have it my mind to create a match-up site called “takemymoney.com” where guilty rich people can give all of their extra money away to sad poor people.  Shouldn’t that make everyone happy? It makes logical sense doesn’t it.  But I assure you it won’t do a thing except create another distraction.  In no time, the now “happy” people will find something else to make them feel crappy.  That’s what we do.  It’s like we are all addicted to drudge.

drudge [drəj] noun

noun: drudge; plural noun: drudges

1. 1.

   a person made to do hard, menial, or dull work.

What do I mean when I say that we are addicted to drudge?  Well what I mean is that in my experience, we are very skilled at finding things that make our lives harder, more meaningless, and duller than they have to be.  For research for this blog, I watched the movie, I’m Still Here, Joaquin Phoenix’s documentary about his retirement from acting and his foray into hip hop.  I can’t believe I watched as much as I did.  It was a like watching a human emotional train wreck.  I don’t know if it was real or a mockumentary, but I can tell you that I would not be surprised by a person putting in that much work to destroy their own lives.  If this was a farce, then Phoenix is a genius and an enlightened being for using his life to create art in this way because so many of us put ourselves through this sort of thing on so many different levels unconsciously.  For him to act as if he were going through this so authentically would seem to require an almost controlled schizophrenia. I recommend watching it and looking for yourself in it.  It is quite an exercise. I can see myself feeling some of the feelings that Phoenix talked about although I would express them differently.  It’s as if–in a strange way–we’re all trying to be something and nothing at the same time.  We love to dream and are simultaneously afraid for those dreams to come true.  When the dreams come true it is almost like a kind of death.  As soon as we achieve what we thought would make us happy, we inevitably ask ourselves the question, “Now what?”

There are a lot of theories of why we cannot be satisfied with happiness.  The one that I think has the most validity is the idea that we are addicted to our emotions.  I think it is this addiction that forces us to put ourselves through things that we can avoid and to seek out and often create situations that will give us the emotional high or low that we believe we need.  I would get into the science of it, but if you are interested, you can just check out the last link I added.  I suggest you give the idea some thought. If you have been asking yourself why you do some of the crazy things you do, this just might give you some insight on what you can do differently.