About Hunting and Gathering and Bullshit

Post 1263:

            There is nothing that characterizes adulthood like having insufficient time. We’re all tired. Too much to do and not enough rest come up in any earnest conversation between parties. Stuck in traffic or dealing with a never-ending glut of emails, insomnia or lack of focus, it can be sort of a mess.

            I sort of wish I could be a hunter-gatherer for a week or two. It would be nice not to have to think about my career trajectory or how I’m going to make all those appointments or how I’m going to keep off enough weight so I don’t have to buy a whole new set of pants. Just wake up, hunt, gather, lay down around a fire with some people that don’t want to kill me, and do it again the next day. I’m thinking I would get super good sleep. My anxiety, gone. Living in the moment, maximized.

            Yes, it’s the hunter-gatherer life for me. I mean, cell phones, right? Who needs ‘em.

            There’s a few problems I can foresee on my journey back to nature. Really being in danger might test the nerves. Being tracked by beasts could cause a little friction to arise within my herd of hunter-gatherer compatriots. The lack of codified laws means I’d have to think twice about arguing with anyone in case they felt like crushing my head with a rock was the only way to end friction.

            So it’s not perfect.

            To be serious for only a moment, nobody wants to go back to that crap. On the other hand, we do get clogged up with an incredible amount of bullshit. Life back then was brutal and awful, but it was at the very least streamlined. Survival. Maybe some procreation. That’s it. Now, way too much. Too much information, too much thinking about things we can’t control, too much everything. Really, too much bullshit.

            If you’re like me, tuning out the crap and devoting limited resources to what matters is one of the hardest things about life. My passions can rule me fairly well, but I’m just as susceptible to the next shiny object as the next person. Got to cut the bullshit. Get back to hunting and gathering. Minus the hunting. And the gathering. Cheers and see you after.