Power

Power. I thought about this word the other day while riding my bike home from depositing a fat check into my new IRA at E*Trade in downtown San Francisco. I had talked to the middle aged portly E*Trade Account Executive, and I quickly got the sense that this person was treating me with a higher level of regard than my shabby blue hoody and rolled up pants would have deemed appropriate. On the outside I looked like a student or bike messenger, but ah! hand over a check with some zeroes on it and the world bows to your feet.

When we sat at down he asked "What do you think of the market now?"

I bluntly said "I don't listen to the talking heads on TV or take advice from Financial Advisors. They don't know what they're talking about. This is the beginning of a long painful downturn of historic proportions. Sometimes the best thing is to do nothing with your money."

With measured sincerity he agreed "Sir, I totally agree..."

I have a feeling he would have agreed to anything I said...

In that piece of paper I handed to him was 3 1/2 years of 401k savings...of waking up everyday when I did not not necessarily want to, of financial calculation, of hours of boredom staring at a compute screen and making small talk, of comfort and stability, of trading my time for their money. Why did I do that?

Because Money is Power. But what is Power then?

Power is the ability to impose your will on the outside world. I can buy material things, services, a smile, even flesh...I can make people do things they would not do other than the fact that I have power to trade. I have earned my money by sacrificing my own time and energy for that end. I have given up four of the best years of my life doing something I did not care about to earn this money, and handing it over to the smiling E*Trade broker, it seemed so ridiculous that so many of us go about our days smiling at strangers to get some more of this stuff.

But money can also be used to resist outside influence. This is how I saw money for a long time. By having it I can avoid control by others. I am not beholden to their expectations, their wants, to do things I do not want to do. It is a way of saying no, I don’t want to. No, I won’t go to work today...or the next, or the next. No I'm not living in this country anymore. I'm checking out of your stupid system for awhile.

When one looks through the lens of money as power the strange world that we live in suddenly seems clearer. In the end money is just the most obvious, easy, crass way of exercising personal power and value. There are less obvious ways that are not valued in today's world:

Peace of mind
Real Freedom
The Truth
Self belief
Talent
Knowledge
Action
Courage
Character
Determination...

I think these are things I've been searching in myself for a long time; and now I see that the real markers of personal success are not what I thought them to be at all.

At this time in America’s history, we are seeing the diminishing of our power. We have literally spent our way to financial, political, and moral poverty. President Obama’s gift is his appeal for us to nurture other aspects of power other than purely tapping into innate human greed.

Hope, honesty, listening to myself...these are my new wages.

One Way Ticket

I bought my plane ticket. A one way ticket to China.

I'm a firm believer in intuition...and my gut is telling me to get the hell out of here. Sometimes you make a decision because it's logical...sometimes just because things you feel a rumbling in your gut that tells you it's the right thing to do. To stay in San Francisco would be a death. I'm sick of it. I'm done with it. I'm restless. And I'm ready to take a leap of faith.

I do feel like I'm running away, but in the best sense of the word. A reset. An opportunity to learn a new language. A chance to live in another country. A chance to live simply out of one suitcase with nothing but my wits. A chance to meet new friends and have stories to tell. A chance to wake up with fresh eyes. A chance to step off the treadmill that powers the machine.

I don't really know what is gonna happen. But this is gonna be fucking awesome.

When I was booking my ticket online I was trying to decide when to leave. Then I saw a flight on Feb 8 at 12:01AM. That's my birthday. It was a sign.

Fuck it.

Elliott, why a blog and why one now?

This blog is my stake in the ground, my declaration that I am checking out of the system. Job, house, country, car, family, girlfriend I renounce thee!! And therefore I renounce all the things that come with you which is what all the above is really about: respectability, status, safety, comforts, money, goals, certainty...I will fail in this renounciation ultimately, but oh what fun it will be!

The peculiar thing is this seems all very calm and rational...like something one decides while choosing which brand of toothpaste to buy at the supermarket.

How did I get to point? I have spent the last 2 months (or 4 odd years really) staring into the abyss. Let me explain it this way - there's a book I like where the main character, for no particular reason other than that his life is completely dissolving around him, decides to go down a deserted empty well. He descends with no food or water and in this well he decides to sit until something happens. He sits, in the complete stillness and darkness waiting, and as his sense of time dissolves he dissolves until he reaches a single point of clarity. I am sitting in that well now. (Yes I come out of that well to have dinner with you nice folks occasionally but mostly I sit in that well and wait.) And a clarity is almost here.

Except that clarity is not clarity at all! It is neither an answer or a direction. Actually it is the total unravelling of any direction. And in the confusion lies the answer! I am a Zen monk solving a koan. It is just a intuition, an instinct of seeing a life based around fear, and of fear being a undercurrent of most of our lives. Of the profound mental/emotional/societal BS that I am not going to participate in anymore.

Above all else I feel sincerity, which one of my favorite things. And what is sincerity? It is another term for truth. And actual truth is what I am after.

So what does this mean in real tangible terms? Not much. Yet.