Empty Pockets

I'm broke.

Nothin' new. Not for me anyway. I don't think me or my family have ever been rollin' in money. I live in a neighborhood where nobody has much money. We get by without it.

I guess everybody has to these days.

It really pisses me of that people who are so greedy have ruined a decent economy for the rest of us. Bernie Madoff, you son of a bitch. Those bastards at Enron. The Wells Fargo jack ass that just bought a 12 million dollar mansion after he couldn't keep his bank afloat. George Bush, might've made you some money fightin' for oil but wars cost money and lives, I don't appreciate you misspendin' either. And a half billion others that we prolly don't know anythin' 'bout.

But the greedy aren't the only ones to blame. People made bad choices and things can't keep gettin' better forever. Though I highly doubt things would've gotten this bad without a little help.

Still bein' broke isn't the end of the world. People live like that constantly and always make it one way or another. I've been broke enough that I didn't eat for a day or two at a time. I've searched for loose change to get an 89 cent burrito from Taco Bell so I could have sumthin' to eat that day. I lost more than 30lbs in a matter of months and not 'cause I was dietin'.

Money is really such crap anyway. No one ever has enough. Everyone has financial problems. No matter how much you get it's never gonna fix your troubles. I just want enough to live comfortably and not worry 'bout goin' hungry or owin' anybody. The world would be better without these lil slips of paper or pieces of metal that tell you how much your time is worth. You trade portions of your life for the ability to go out and enjoy other portions of it, isn't that a scam? You lose about 40 hours a week to have fun about 8 hours and spend the rest wonderin' how your gonna pay for this or that and are unable to sleep 'cause you worry if your kids are gonna go hungry next month. It's all messed up. But that's the way things are.

What is good about bein' broke is that it builds character. If you grew up broke you get a better sense of the sufferin' in the world and you understand the people in it. Money creates a barrier between people that would be friends otherwise. A lot of people have said there is no racism only money that creates a clear division between the have's and have not's. Without an overabundance of money nobody gets to grow up bein' one of those spoiled rich kids that whines 'cause after wreckin' their third car daddy won't buy them another new one. That's always a plus in my book.

I'm sure you heard of the Buddha right? That chubby guy who's belly you rub for good luck in Chinese restaurants? No not Uncle Earl, the statue guy.

So Buddha was originally a prince and his daddy, the king, didn't want his son to know any pain, suffering, or any of the badness we all deal with everyday so he kept him locked up in a castle, most of the time anyway. One day the prince goes out for a ride. Now when the prince wanted to do that, the king had all the old, sick, poor etc. taken off the streets so his son wouldn't see 'em. Well this day they missed an old man. The prince stops and talks to the old man to ask him why he's like that. The old man explain he's old and he'll die soon enough, just like the prince will one day. The prince takes more rides and meets more people in different sorts of suffering conditions and decided he should do sumthin' bout it.

Eventually he comes up with the four noble truths of Buddhism which basically say:

1. Life is full of sufferin'.

2. Sufferin' comes from wantin'.

3. You gotta end your wantin' if you want to end your sufferin'.

4. The way to end you wantin' is an 8 part way of checkin' yourself. You gotta make sure you're views, intentions, actions, what you say, and a few other things are right and just. Once you've done this you'll be more enlightened and not suffer so much.

I agree with alot of that and I dig Buddhism anyway. It's a nice philosophy and I like that. I would like it if more people were more willin' to surrender their wants for all those non-essential things like big screen T.V.'s, $140 Hardy t-shirts, every new video game.

People don't need half the stuff that's bein sold to 'em. We don't need so much money if we don't need so much of the crap we waste it on. I don't like the idea of money but at the moment there's no way around it. But maybe the next time your shoppin just think about it. Do you really need any of that? Can you live without it? Would it make you life complete, really? Or are you throwin' away hours of you life trapped in metal and paper for crap?