If I Were Ann Romney’s Horse

SHEESH, Gentle Reader.  SHEESH.  Seventy plus grand for a horse to live for a year.  I love horses, don’t get me wrong, but when I gaze back and forth between her horse and the perks thereof, and myself, and the- uhm- NON-PERKS hereof, I just have to wonder.  How can you spend more money on a horse than countless people all over the world (including in your own country) make in an entire year.  Or two?  Or more, fine, if we’re honest.

Of course, Ann Romney’s horse is a beautiful and talented creature.  But still and nonetheless.  There’s just something terribly wrong here and the foundation for it is so deep it can be hard to get any tidbit of clarity.  Certainly, yes, one is entitled to the fruits of one’s labors, right?  But when you have so much and contribute so little to the common good- instead taking more than your fair share (think carbon footprint, just for instance) it seems skewed.  We’re venturing deep into The Commentary E.O. Wilson wrote about in terms of selfishness and altruism.  Viz:  selfishness works for individuals, but it sinks groups and everything past that is commentary.

What we have here, then, is a mammoth expression of selfishness which does not include any evidence of compensating altruism.  And even though the Partner (who is deep into Manly P. Hall’s Encyclopedia of Metaphysical Stuff and thus convinced once and for all that I am absolutely, for sure,  Not of This Earth and THEREFORE operating on some set of instructions from deep space) tries to remind me, in varying degrees of patient gentleness, that this whole thing, the whole selfishness thing, the whole thing of not caring what happens to the other guy, is part and parcel of how another set of individuals function who happen to be running the world right now and who, apparently, are not from my Home Planet.  You are incapable, he said, of understanding this.  You can’t even swat a fly! This here is how it works, kid.  Wakey wakey!  I then proceed to wonder about all sorts of things.

Still.  As I put one foot in front of the other in the never ending quest to keep bodies and souls together, and as I watch Ann Romney’s horse, I can’t help but wonder how it is that I feel so alienated from a culture that values money over service.  It doesn’t seem familiar at all these days and that is extremely disorienting.  I can’t help but wonder how it is that I, as a small business person, can get absolutely no help whatsoever to expand my business.  So I could, let’s say, hire somebody.  You know, be a job creator? Instead I cannot even get local business to sell my product, because their shelves are full of items that are distributed by big, corporate interests and a small (OK! MICROSCOPIC!) entrepreneur such as myself is, to quote A. Proulx, tits up in a ditch.  At the same time, Not Being Of This Earth, I feel hopeful about things after I finally manage to climb the Everest of Anxiety that looms every morning as I contemplate my worldly situation.  Since I’m discovering that we see what we expect to see, don’t see what we don’t know about, and that given the constant state of flux and conflict between our immune systems and the outside world it’s not so surprising that the world exists in a state of Antagonism, every day I renew my practice in learning to see, which may eventually and I firmly expect will, produce miracles.  Little ones occur every day after all- the privilege of being able to help others cannot be overestimated in terms of the miracles you get to see.  I won’t ever be Ann Romney’s horse, of course; but it seems like a long way to go to have to turn into a horse to have an income,  doesn’t it?  So we shall continue to forge ahead on our two little legs.

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