“l know you’re partial to convenience stores, but dammit, H.I., the sun don’t rise and set on the corner grocery… You gotta have a little bit of ambition.”
-Raising Arizona
I worked delivery every meaningful hour this past weekend. As I do most weekends. I’m not complaining; I actually sort of enjoy it. I’m drawn to the starving artist lifestyle – serving customers by night, reaching for the eternal by day (You can reverse that). And yes at this point I do take my little self-published fan-fiction movies seriously enough to call them art. Not seriously enough to do them a 5.1 surround mix…Yet😈
Gotta strike a balance. This lifestyle suits my happiness. But, as John Goodman (and every meaningful person in my life) beseeches, “you gotta have a little bit of ambition.”
What’s funny about this quote is that every person in the scene is a convicted criminal, and they are plotting the next best american robbery. So what’s ambition if not that?
While I was driving this past weekend I kept hearing this ad on my car radio – the most depressing ad I’ve ever heard in my life. It was for a healthcare company called Tri-Health. A young woman’s soothing voice assuring us, and I’m paraphrasing heavily, ‘her’ company will be there (to reap the profits of our cancerous demise). She says, “you take care of the caffeination, we’ll take care of the vaccination$.”.. (You work yourself to a bloody pulp, we’ll clean up your grease $tain) (You succumb to crippling stress-induced depression, and we’ll prop you up with a cocktail of pharmaceutical$) (You keel over from heart failure and comorbid cancer, and we’ll collect the charges from your estate over your dead body!) Ughhh it just put me in the worst mood. So the next time it came on the radio I turned the channel. And the time after that, and after that.
Don’t get me wrong, I have the utmost respect and appreciation for healthcare workers. But it’s our cultural dependence and worship of the system that saddens me. It is our inclination to work until we break, and let them fix us. We are misguided.
I gotta have a little bit of ambition. But this I do believe, that it should not be quite the same sort of ambition my parents had. They did nothing wrong. In fact they’ve done more right than I can hope to realistically. But this is 2021. The planet is in dire straits, and so is our health. Don’t make the mistake of believing this is just the way things are. Don’t believe that the body grows old and deteriorates simply as a matter of course. There are things we are doing as a culture that are detrimental to our health, and the health of the other 99.99% of Earth’s beautiful inhabitants. You know it, I know it. Let’s fix it.
Women used to die at an astonishing rate bearing children. Newsflash: they still do. But then even more so. One major cause was bacterial infections. From doctors refusing to wash their hands before delivery (bc it was somehow below them?) That was before a man by the name of Ignaz Semmelweis suggested they do so. This was around 1850. They called him crazy and dismissed him. So he did go insane. He couldn’t drop it, couldn’t ignore the injustice, the unknowing poor mothers dying. He was ordered to a barbaric mental asylum. Frustrated, he sliced his own hand with a dirty scalpel and died of blood poisoning very shortly after. How’s that for a poetic ending? Only after his death did other people figure it out. True story. True hero.
History shows us our mistakes of the past. What mistakes are we making today?
My next post will be about hope.
E.F.
Experience Film 
Great post. Spontaneous and rooted in the night job train of thought. I used to deliver daily newspaper for 4 years from 2am-6am. In Finland from +20C to -30C. That really builds character. 😅
Also the point about washing hands before delivering a baby. Great story but unfortunately they went too far. If there’s no preexisting conditions or pre-birth complications there is little reason to give birth in the hospital just to minimize the risk while dismissing a mental and emotional well-being of the mother to be.
As with everything in life, extremes of any kind in majority of cases are bad. Sometimes short term other time long term. Moderation is the answer.
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That newspaper job in Dark Night Finland..🥶Wow! What an experience though. How long did you live in Finland🇫🇮?
I know you have experience, being a father, that I do not. But my girlfriend tells me that here in The United States we do a LOT of things wrong with delivering babies. She agrees hospitalization is wrong (unless there are pre-birth complications, as u said. It most be such a traumatic experience, In general.
Very wise words, my friend. I will take them with me🙌🏼😌
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I lived in the unforgiving North from November 1999 until November 2011. Snow is still magical to me.
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Excellent! Snow is still magical to me too🙂
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I believe that the ambition has changed a lot in its objectives. I have seen my parents always try to work, save money, and be able to give their children a better future. My parents never took a vacation, they never spent anything, they never went to the cinema, they never ate in restaurants, they were totally intent on saving money to help us children when we would study in the future. But now I have seen many parents who have a very expensive lifestyle, and think only of themselves. Sometimes I wonder why they had these children if they don’t take care of them. Also, I see parents who want success at all costs, and unlimited money. They want money not to do something for their children but to show a status symbol to everyone, as if their happiness depended on it. My parents never thought about being happy but just worked and raised their children and that’s it. They were ambitious in making money but the money was meant to be used for the welfare of the children and not for themselves. Now I see very selfish parents, they are often away from home, they lead a double life, they don’t care what their children do and they don’t give a damn about their future.
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I treasure your observations. It sounds like your parents are very disciplined, and loving. My parents are too, and I am eternally grateful.
Yeah it seems like happiness and self-esteem are so fragile anymore. People are valuing themselves against impossible standards. Everything is getting so much more expensive too. People are spending all their money, but can’t figure it where it all goes. It’s not entirely their fault.
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