Paying Off These Parking Tickets
As I lurched into my car this morning I saw an envelope on the floor of the driver's side. Within it lay a blue and white parking ticket folded up neatly, slightly water damaged from the beach mist. A rush of several thoughts came to mind, but with a sigh I finally said aloud: “FFFFFFFuuck”.
I began to think about the thousands of dollars I owed this city. Debts. The bleak idea of paying off my parking tickets was far easier to bear than the true act of doing so. In a few months, when the bills have stacked, or perhaps when I wake up to a boot on my car and then soon find myself looking up at the sky with anguish, because that was the last possible thing I could've handle that day, I might just begin to shovel out my money. Author, Mark Manson, wrote about the nihilist perspective. He described it as us finding comfort within our individualistic definition of life's insignificance and how on the contrary, it is exceptionally important to keep hope. In Manson's book, Everything is Fucked, he discusses hope and the ways we place value within something, whether it be ethically or emotionally, and how essentially, 'hope' is our own choice. In other words, we are unique in our ability to deem something more, or less, important than our peers, like our personal goals, which give us hope of a before and after story. We are able to see, by the results of our product, how successful we have been, and this success is personal, no one can decide when a work has fulfilled its duty, whether that duty was to help the world, or just help us.
In finding a "purpose", or rather, something we'd like to achieve, life begins to have a meaning, because we have something to work towards. These personal goals are ever changing, we must be mindful of this fact because the ability to change our minds does not equate to failure, or indecisiveness, despite us interpreting it that way, but do not fear. When we commence a project we are met with obstacles, sometimes that obstacle can be ourselves, when we do what feels good rather than what we should do (remember, what we decide is important is solely up to us...we don't have to do anything), and other times the obstacles are out of our control. We may run into health risks that tell us we can no longer work towards being the athlete we always wanted to be. We may live in a city that gets wiped out and flooded by an unprecedented veering river, forced to rebuild from scratch, putting present plans at a standstill. Remarkably, the human desire to survive, not just to survive but to live, forces us to stand up again after falling down 7 times, and this hope, our ability to want to achieve something, will be what drives us hardest. To put it simply: sometimes goals can be unattainable, out of our hands, and when this occurs it is important to be adaptable.
But in reading Manson's book I was not thinking about my goals as much as I was these parking tickets and how they will matter as a before-and-after scheme in my life (I have yet to find any beneficial outcomes). Therefore, I have deemed my debts to San Francisco 'insignificant' for two reasons:
One, this city has so much fucking public transport funding, SFMTA reported a yearly estimate of 90 million dollars in revenue, (which is hardly being used in the right way) that I do not feel the inclination to contribute to its corruption and misuse of my "hard earned tax dollars". Sorry, but the city does not need my money. We don't even know where it goes! The only thing allegedly for certain is that the people giving me the tickets are being compensated with the same money I was forced to cough up. Talk about life being a bitch.
Two, my silly hippy belief on how stupid money is. Currency amounts to something and is nothing. It is little numbers sitting within a virtual world changing from a 4 to a 5 with the swipe of a plastic card. I mean, there are wars happening, does my parking ticket matter to anyone besides myself and the meter maid who's decided they had had enough?
Similarly, I began to think about all of the people I was indebted to, but a different debt, the good kind. In creating a life with purpose it is important to live by a few principles: community, care (meaningfulness), and emotion. With indifference life degenerates. When we have no values or strong beliefs we begin to lack reason or rationality behind our decision making. Imperative to our interpersonal relationships, care and emotion help us create deeper connections and allows us to discover things about ourselves.
I finally learned how to delve deeper, whether that was through conversation, poetry, or personal growth, I began to coax myself out of the protective shell I had once created. I quickly found myself inspired by the people around me just by listening to their journey's and the tribulations they faced while on them. Life had opened up! I was given hope, and because of that I became capable of withdrawing myself from the bleak and cynical perspective I was so wrapped up in. Not to be confused with comparing myself with my peers, instead I realized my problems were my own, and based on my community's success approaching their own struggles, I learned alternative ways to do the same. Reader, the first step to self development is not telling yourself there is something wrong with you that must be erased. You are valuable, you are important as is. Instead it is by the desire to improve a characteristic within us which might have caused someone harm (yourself, or a loved one), and with this desire tough questions need to be asked; about the way we react, how accountable we hold ourselves to our mistakes, and most importantly: 'Am I wrong?'. After mastering this the world expands...and also shrinks.
The older we get the better we get at coping. We know what to expect when things go awry, and we get better at finding solutions faster. Problems get harder, we get stronger...smarter.
I'll pay off these parking tickets someday...but today the problem is that I want to do it tomorrow. As the famous pirate Jack Sparrow once said:
"The problem is not the problem, the problem is your problem with the problem...savvy?"
