Stuff Sickness

We spend so much time and effort trying to get money. Money to spend on a 'good' time. (translates as drugs) Going out on the weekend takes up almost all that we work for, and what do we have to show for it? A hangover? Some foggy memories with the feeling that we enjoyed whatever it was that we did? Hepatitis?
Admittedly most of our money does go towards rent or mortgage and food. Both of which are useful. It is the rest that disappears. We drink it, or spend it getting into places with flashing lights and loud noises, or we buy useless junk with it. It sometimes seems to become a competition of i can accumulate more junk than you. Or my junk is more expensive than your junk. We have flash mobile phones that we call and text each other on, but they could be used as a GPS if we wanted or a MP3 player if it didn't waste the battery, we buy flat screen TVs and play station games, we sometimes play when we are bored, when we have time, when we are not working. We buy flash jackets, brand name clothes and turbo cars. We can get so immersed in this competition, that it becomes a lifestyle, a goal to give us something to achieve with the fake sense that when we win we will be happy, we forget that it is just a game, and that we can never win. We sometimes even forget that we don't need to win, that we are capable of being happy, and feeling good, when we make enough to eat, to stay somewhere, and have some time to go surfing or bush walking or just to chill with mates. We can be satisfied with the simple life, we are capable of so much more when we stop wasting our time in clubs where we cant even hear each other and socialize in each others company. We are generally happier not with our stuff, but with our mates.

Poverty

How do we decide what poverty is? Is it the people in third world counties, who can't afford to eat good food? Is it only the people who are held on the brink of death where money would hold certain life or does it extend to people in our own country? People on the streets, or people who have to borrow money for lunch two days before payday, or people who have to take a calculator with them to find out what groceries they can afford before they get to the checkout? Or does it depend on how much money we have? As a person or a community average? Are the people who have to search through their shrapnel to buy a beer poor while we can pull a note from our wallet and rich while we have to forgo the drink? Is the kid with second hand books at the private school poor at school for having cheaper goods and rich in their community for going to a private school? and more so, in these times of economic struggle, can we actually say that nuns sworn to live in poverty are in poverty, when they have joint ownership of vast quantities of land? something even the higher income earners in our society are struggling to obtain. Can anyone who is capable of affording luxuries (things not directly relevant to our survival) claim to be living in poverty?

Blame and Guilt

Guilt is what we feel when we are to blame for something that we feel to be wrong or damaging or to have hurt someone in someway, weather it be physically, mentally or emotionally, so why is it that so many of us feel guilt when we are not to blame. There are many examples in which we may blame ourselves although no one else blames us, or even when we know that what went wrong was not our fault.
Sometimes we can feel guilty about things that we could not have stopped, that were totally outside of our control, like when a loved one falls sick and is hospitalised.
Sometimes we can blame ourselves for things that perhaps we could have prevented but we could not have realized until they had happened. Perhaps if we had not parked in the street, the car would not have been broken into, perhaps if i had payed a bit more for that condom it might not have broken.
The things that many of us feel the most guilt for, with the least reason to feel guilty for are the things that we may have been able to prevent, but if we had known how to we would have diffidently done it without any hesitance or resistance. The thought that 'perhaps if i had eaten better i would not have had that miscarriage and my baby would still be alive', does not make it our fault in fact it means that it is most diffidently not, for if we had known that from the start we would have done that and it would not have happened at all. The same goes for the thought that perhaps 'if we had listened to him he would not have killed himself and would still be here', if we know, that we would have done that if we had only known, then it could not possibly be our fault. If we were capable of changing what has happened we would have done it, so we can not be to blame for it. This knowledge should be enough for us not to feel guilt, but it normally takes more than reality and facts to change our feelings. Sometimes our feelings make us feel guilty even though we are not to blame.

Listening

Being listened to doesn't seem all that important to us until it doesn't happen. We think that we can live independently, without others, if we are alright with our own company, or we tend to believe that having friends and family, who we can share time with and talk with is enough, especially if they care about us, help us enjoy our time and keep us safe or help us out when we need it. However we also need people who will listen to us, not in the psychiatrist way of let us spill all of our problems, just in a friend way, of not cutting us off about something totally unrelated while we are telling them a story, of responding to it appropriately, and giving us some attention.
We rarely ever notice that we need this until we are deprived of it. While we have one friend who loves to hear about the tiny adventures that occur in our day to day lives, we can be content with being talked over by other friends. Perhaps this is why so many of us talk over each other without ever actually listening to what the people around us have to say. Perhaps we forget or never realize how frustrating it could be for them to be talked over, or to be only vaguely involved in conversation.
We should not only realize this but try to remember it when someone is talking to us, when we find ourselves getting distracted by the junk in our minds. We must try to pay attention, to what they are saying, and to what they actually mean. (We may not realize just what it will mean to them.)