Self Exploration (day 19) – Greed

Monkey see, monkey do.

I see my friend flying a drone with a video camera attached to it, I want a drone with a video camera attached to it.

My capacity to acquire a greed the Capitalist marketer encourages me to have often astounds me. I used to want sea-doos, skidoos, dirt bikes, four wheelers, muscle cars, hot rods, motorcycles, horses, walkman, discman, stereo, on and on. I frequently spend hours browsing Craigslist.

I still fancy that stuff. I think technology is cool. I love exploring it and learning it, hacking it and optimizing it.

A very hard control over my mind has been reducing my greed.

I now recognize that feeling to squirrel away what I have, even if I don’t plan on using it any time soon. It’s an anxious feeling. If I don’t act fast, I’ll forever be without it.

Perhaps this comes from my long forgotten past of famines, war, homesteading. A time not built upon factories and grocers.

I value part of this greed in me, the part that plans for a future, smartly. My survival instinct. If I see something I’ll need in the future I can buy it now that it’s on sale! .99cent cans of tuna!

I am trying to consciously shift my focus from motorcycles to mushrooms, from computer specifications to canning supplies.

In short, my greed has become of knowledge, not of things – or at least not just things.

I find myself becoming passive about things that take me away from my capacity as a human and my connection to this earth. I still believe in tools, but my interest in using devices that are smart so I don’t have to be is not something I am fond of or interested in.

The battle against greed is everywhere. I have found this can easily turn into frustration, mostly for people that are confronted with my resistance. This frustration becomes impatience, which hurts me, making me feel very isolated and alone. This is how I feel too when I’m confronted with somebody else’s resistance in a way I’m not yet aware of, resulting in the patterns of my mind to take control.

Whoever it is experiencing the frustration in the end, I don’t like it, and this has encouraged me to learning that to live in society it requires a bit of sacrifice in this regard. I guess this is like David Suzuki promoting bicycling and flying around the world to do the promoting.

I am learning that of all my battles, this one in particular effects most people around me. Does this mean I make this  a silent battle to face alone?

Battling greed is a very deep rooted battle. Is this also a fruitless battle? Who wants to question every motive of every action and thought?

I am learning that I can still have an interest and appreciate things without having to own them myself. I am also learning that greed displaces my unique thought with a popular thought.