Barracudas

This post is inspired by Warrior Girl, the 99%-ers, and the Christmas season.

First, Warrior Girl. This young woman is freaking amazing. Her goals and dreams take my breath away. I would never be able to dream this big. But dreams are amorphous and unreal. So instead of just dreaming, she works at making her dreams come true. This makes her, in my estimation, awesome. She is also compassionate and kind to everyone except herself. Her most recent blog post says her brother wants to be the biggest fish in the ocean. She wants to be more than minnow.

Warrior Girl, you are. You are inspirational. You are strong. You are a fighter. You are willing to work for a dream so instead of it being a dream, it is a goal.

And what has this got to do with the 99%-ers and Christmas?

I believe we are much better at seeing what is over there and out of reach rather than what we have in our own possession at this time.

We look at what is “better” or “more” or “bigger” than what we currently possess and forget that we are in hog heaven here. When someone sitting in a heated house with food in the fridge, running water, electricity, and a smart phone complains about their poverty, there is someone in a Third World Country (or whatever term we have for countries that aren’t as wealthy) who is living in a bug infested grass or mud or cardboard hut without a fridge to store their air (since they don’t have food), and no clean water let alone any electricity or even a dumb phone (couldn’t charge it anyway) that is amazed.

Are Fortune 500 executives overpaid? What’s up with this Golden Parachute crap? Is the wage disparity leading us to revolt?

These are legitimate questions. They need answers. I don’t deny that. I also don’t have the answers.

However, the 99% in this country have so much more than much of the world, that equalizing wealth for everyone would put many of us into the other category – that which we claim to despise.

We are focusing on Bill Gates, Warren Buffet, Oprah Winfrey, the Walton family – those disgustingly rich people – and all they have. There is more and better and bigger out there. We are dissatisfied with our ever larger houses and ever newer cars with ever improved features and our rapidly expanding technology.

We romanticize a Paleo existence and forget that subsistence living starts with SUB or under or less. We aren’t grateful for what we have because we are focused on what we lack. And we all lack.

I am amazed at what Warrior Girl can physically do. I can’t even begin to hope to dream of matching her prowess. Or her stamina. Or endurance. All I can see is this huge presence, this big fish, who graciously reads my blogs and says “Good job” when I manage to struggle and move some weight that she can pick up one handed and probably twirl around like a baton. She wants to see a minnow? Hell, I’m right here.

I’m fortunate enough, if I want to take this attitude, to have started out at such a deficit, that I can congratulate myself for being able to lunge down the mat without falling over. I can just see Warrior Girl rolling her eyes if someone mentioned that she was unable to manage such a small feat. I am thrilled that I managed to break parallel (but did not get ass to grass) with a 22# bar on an overhead squat. Really? This is something to be proud of? Well, that is a matter of perspective. For me? Yes. I did it.

And that is why Warrior Girl and the 99%-ers in the US are not minnows. They are comparing themselves to such big fish that they forget that overall, they are barracudas. And who really wants to be a freaking blue whale? They are not really fish anyway.

And Christmas? What has this to do with Christmas? This seems to be the time of year to list all we want. We take one day in November to remember we are thankful for all we have, and then out come the lists of all the things we still want.

We are lucky. We are fortunate. We are mighty. We are strong. We are so used to all the things we have that we take them for granted and forget what it took for us to get to where we are. We see the road ahead is long and treacherous and forget the pitfalls and traps that were in our way already.

There is a proverb about not looking back because that is not the direction you are going. However, maybe a quick glance backwards, at least every once in a while, would help us all remember how fortunate we are to be this far along our path. Our journey to this point has been hard. We have come farther than we imagine. We are luckier than we know.

We are really a bunch of pretty fantastic barracudas.