Artists and Office Rats

In Sarasota, Florida there are a lot of resident artists, and one thing they do is built beautiful ornate sand castles out of that extraordinary fine white powder they have on the beaches of Siesta Key. The castles are washed away each night by the sea, but that doesn't seem to bother the artists.

In New York City and elsewhere across the country, there are a lot of resident office slaves, people who are given a modest bi-weekly stipend to help their employers become rich. Like the artists, everything they do will also be quickly washed away and forgotten, but that doesn't seem to bother the office slaves either.

Both are a little puzzling to me -- we're all just rearranging piles of dirt, or papers... why do people bother? Life is such a quick little joke, a one-liner at that, yet for some reason people become emotionally invested in their dirt piles, like they carry some larger significance.

A lot of people get excited about fancy cars, too. I don't understand that one either, except that it's fun to drive any vehicle and go somewhere.

One difference between the sand artists and the paper pushing office dwellers: the artists in Sarasota are practicing a craft and refining a skill, and as such gain personal fulfillment from what they're doing. In a way, while it appears outwardly that they are building castles, they are actually instead building something inside themselves, a set of artistic skills, and the castles they create are just byproducts of their inner construction, because the castles will wash away at the end of the day, and only their skills developed while building them will remain. Thus the castles are not lost; each castle lives on as a tiny improvement to the artist's skill set, which they carry with them everywhere they go.

The ephemeral nature of their art only reinforces the point: that they should not get attached to any single work of art -- because after all, it's just a pile of dirt. They should instead learn as much from the process; in other words enjoy the journey; the destination is just a distraction. In that sense they are like musicians or other performance artists, who do not carry any body of work with them, they carry only their skills in their heads.

Office slaves sometimes wake up and realize they are making castles in the sand, too, that what they are doing is not terribly important to anybody. But they are not practicing an art, they are obeying orders. And there's nothing beautiful or satisfying about the castles they create, because they are not intended to be beautiful or pleasing. But the castles they create have a utility to the world, they help the machinery of existence run more smoothly through the service or product that they create.

It strikes me as kind of tragic though to think that an office slave might live and die without ever having acquired the skill of making something that is beautiful to him/her self... they will only have learned the skills of pleasing their slave-master, and when they reach their vaunted retirement, what will they do? They will have given the best years of their life to someone else, with only money to show for it. They will be bored and wonder why they were put on this earth. They will have no useful skills to show for their years of labor. They will try to get rid of the money they have accumulated as fast as possible in Las Vegas.

Money is of course very helpful in life, so nothing wrong with having it. But without any skills to make yourself happy, money doesn't do you much good, it just keeps you alive like a life-support machine... it does nothing to help you learn how to actually enjoy your riches.

It's remarkably selfless and charitable that people are willing to trade in their lives in order to make money, especially when the lion's share of it goes to someone else. Most, like me, probably just do it out of necessity for food and shelter, but many go that extra mile and do it with pride, passion and zeal. For me there is no pride in my slavery, I feel a bit humiliated when I have to talk about it.

Well I'm no guru, I don't have any answers, so whatever battle you've chosen in life, whether it's making money or making art, I salute you and wish you all the best. Different strokes for different folks, and it's a blessing because variety is in my opinion more than just the spice of life, it's the most indispensable ingredient!