The Slacker's Guide to the Great Remission: Introduction

Introduction
The alarm clock yanks you into the day. It’s time to get up, but you hide beneath the covers and close your eyes searching for the dream, longing for escape back to sleep. Instead, your mind whirls. You think and you stew as the day ahead looms like an unjust punishment for a crime you can’t recall.

The activity that occupies most of your life, your career, seems pointless. The money you earn is not nearly enough to buy all the things you need to make the sacrifice of time and effort worthwhile. Your vacation is months away but you long for immediate release or at least a change in the daily routine, no matter how small. It won’t happen today or tomorrow either. No, you’re running on empty, your youth behind you as middle age balloons around your gut.

Opportunity keeps slipping through your fingers as hopefulness and the energy to pursue it wanes. Though you wish you didn’t have to labor, the prospect of a layoff fills you with anxiety.

The clock inches forward. You’re already late. There’s no more avoiding it. It’s time to get ready for work.

It seems you labor just to pay taxes, the mortgage, the utility bills, make the car payment and pay insurance premiums and although you spend all that’s left on the credit card bills, the balance is higher every month. Your adjustable rate mortgage is about to ratchet up another point even as your home value tanks.

Your stock portfolio is nearly worthless, your retirement plan is a wreck and taxes just went up. How much money you’ll dump into the gas tank today is anybody’s guess. Your spouse works too and you hardly see her except in the evening or on weekends when you try hard to entertain each other by spending money you haven’t made yet.

The kids are getting their values from daycare and school, social media and friends you’ve never met. They come home to an empty house where they microwave a frozen dinner and plop down in front of the television or fixate on their cell phone until you get home to kiss them goodnight.

You drink and smoke and eat too much and the doctor has put you on antidepressants, blood pressure medication, cholesterol lowering drugs and given you extra prescriptions to mitigate the side effects of the medicines you’re already taking.

Is this the American dream they promised you when you slogged your way through school to get the education needed to reap the rewards of being a respected member of our free society?

Though stressed out by time constraints while barely moving in the traffic gridlock, driving is at least time to yourself, a time to reflect, a moment when you aren’t required to be productive or to multitask responsibilities, a time when you feel slightly free.

On your way to work you pass a bum squatting beside the freeway onramp, in his hands is a cardboard sign that reads, Will work for food. Please help.

On another day you might feel compassionate and toss him a dollar but today you are irate and affronted by his effrontery. You roll down your window and shout, “Get a job, you bum.” He looks back with rheumy, sheepdog eyes. Your mind automatically runs a subroutine on injustice, on where your tax money goes, and you wonder why this guy is destitute in the land of plenty. Your social programming kicks in and instinctively you rail at his laziness, his slovenliness, and his economic drain on society. Your stress level ratchets higher along with your personal sense of dissatisfaction.

Something is terribly wrong. You’ve worked hard to get here but this isn’t the life you’d hoped for. You’ve absorbed the political promises, voted your beliefs, tried to fine-tune your position within the system but things don’t change. You search deeper. The realization dawns that more money and more power won’t stop that gnawing sensation, that nagging doubt you will ever reach economic nirvana: the promised land of enough, where living begins and striving ends. You know people who appear to be there but their lives seem far from sublime, full of turmoil, divorce, stress and avarice, even suicide. You press your pounding head as your blood pressure skyrockets and sense that death may come long before you ever truly retire.

Meanwhile, the bum drops his sign and heads off into the bushes stroking the wad of cash in his pocket. He gets back to camp and counts out the donations from the twenty-five people who felt charitable this morning. His eyes gleam when the twenty-fourth bill turns out to be a five, bringing his total to twenty-nine dollars, enough to live for a whole week or longer if he’s careful.

He pulls out the five and puts it in his pack, plumping his savings to almost fifty dollars. Another couple of weeks and he’ll have enough to buy a warm bedroll from the thrift store, just in time for the cool, fall weather. Of course, when the good weather ends here he’ll hitchhike south and spend the winter where the climate is much kinder.

He lies back, looks at the shadows and figures it must be well after nine in the morning. The homeless shelter isn’t serving lunch until noon so he has almost an hour to soak up some sun before hopping the cross-town bus. He takes a long drag from his jug of water and reflects on how much more energy he has since he quit boozing. The sun warms his face and above the freeway din he hears the twittering of birds. He closes his eyes and savors the moment. Ah, he thinks. Life is good.

To be continued...

You can read the Preface to the Slacker's guide Part 1 and Part 2 here.

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