Word of the Week #355:
My son is 22 years old. If he had not become a Communist at 22, I would have disowned him. If he is still a Communist at 30, I will do it then.
Georges Clemenceau
As I inch towards my thirties and take a look at my rapidly changing life, this is one quote that keeps coming back to my mind.
How different is communism (or socialism) from capitalism? Is one truly that much different from the other?
I have seen so many people transition from one to the other—usually, almost exclusively, former to latter—that I have to imagine that there is a link or a pathway between the two. There must be one fork in the road that just ever so diverges from the one to the other, and following that changes a lot about you.
I am beginning to understand what that change is.
As I have grown older, I have begun to feel that the amount of love and strength and energy I have is relatively limited. I still think it is immense, but limited nonetheless.
And lately, I have begun to realise that having this limit to my supply of energy, I cannot afford to allocate too much of it to all the things—or the people—in the world. At some point, I have to be judicious with my resources.
How do we share our love among the people around us? Yes, some people in our lives might need our love, but if they can’t love us back, wouldn’t that just drain us? We can’t just keep giving and giving and get nothing in return, right? At some point, we tend to distance ourselves from them.
By comparison, it is so much easier to love someone whose presence and words and actions just fill our lives with energy, right?
That’s just return on investment, after all.
Of course, I’m not saying that I’m a full-blown capitalist just yet. Capitalism-curious, at the most. However, I am beginning to understand the transition.
We cannot love and protect and provide for the entire world. We have to prioritise us and ours. As we grow older, as our responsibilities grow more real, we have to focus on what we can do, what we need to do, instead of what we wish we could do.
Reallocation of our own resources to ensure our own sustenance. That doesn’t sound like the worst thing in the world, right?
Then why do I feel so dirty saying it…
All in all, you’re just another brick in the wall.
The Wall, Pink Floyd
