Yesterday I interrupted the topic we’ve been exploring in order to post about my newest musical release, ‘Exceedingly Dope Things, Vol. 1’, which is a collaboration project I recently worked on with over twenty fellow rappers and producers from Reddit’s r/makinghiphop community. It turned out great, if I do say so myself, so if you are interested in hearing it, you can check out my DAY 31 post, or check out the embedded Spotify player at the bottom of this post (today’s post). It would mean a lot to me, as well as to everyone who was involved in creating it, and if you’re a rap fan I’m sure you’ll enjoy it.
Today, we are returning to the topic we’ve been exploring, that of our limited time on this earth, and of the infinite sources of inspiration that are all around us as long as we are alive here. Since we acknowledged just how amazing the possibilities are, and just how much inspiration can be found in life and in the world as long as we learn to perceive them correctly, we were then wondering why most of us spend most of our time doing things we don’t enjoy and which we have no real interest in doing, things that don’t inspire us at all. Yes, we all know that it’s only for the money, but we never question why we have even normalized this practice of engaging in activities for the sole purpose of receiving money. You can say that you are only doing your job for the money, but the real question is “why do you feel comfortable doing something when all you will get out of it is money?” I mean, I understand, you are getting paid so it’s not such a bad trade, I get that. You’re getting paid, so it’s only fair that you do your job, right? You give away some time of your life, and you get some money in return. It’s only temporary anyway, since your life will continue after your shift, only now you will have some money.
Just how temporary is it though, when you do the same for five out of seven days of the week, and when it takes up most of your day? If you had to choose between an extra hour or life or fifteen dollars, which would you choose? What if you could sell one hour of your life for twenty dollars, would you do it? You might deny that you would, and yet we all do it every day, as if it was the most natural thing to do. Whether it’s fifteen dollars or fifty, our time is priceless, and one second of life is worth more than a trillion dollars, more than all the money in the world even. Now, some of you might laugh at me when I say this, because realistically, you would happily trade a minute, an hour, or a day, of your time, for a billion dollars, not to mention a trillion. See, that’s exactly why I chose such an extravagant figure though, because if I had said twenty, fifty, or even a hundred dollars, most of you would have still agreed with me, as far as what I said about an hour of your time being priceless. So, your time is worth more than a hundred dollars but not more than a billion? So, what’s the exact figure then at which you can be bought? And if you put a price on an hour of your time, what’s stopping an extremely wealthy person from buying up the entirety of your remaining days on this earth? As long as they have the money, they should be able to buy your time, right? The fact is that time is life, and life might be many things, it might be mysterious and misunderstood, but there’s simply no denying that it’s something real. Money is a concept, money is a man-made object, it is not real in the same sense as life is, and therefore, no matter how tempting it might be, it makes no sense to sell any amount of our time for any amount of money.
Is it realistic? I know it’s not, but the fact that what I’m saying is not realistic in today’s world serves as proof of how backwards our society is. Do I have all the answers? No. I still work and I still live in this materialistic and exploitative system, precisely because it’s all I know. We are all trapped in this system and we know that we have to live by its rules and structure if we wish to survive, so we go along with it, and that’s exactly what this system relies on in order to continue.
We’ll keep following this train of thought tomorrow though…
If you have a few minutes check out my track ‘Coffee & Contemplation’, featuring Meero on the hook, produced by Maidenless. It’s part of the recently released r/makinghiphop mixtape I mentioned at the start of my post. Stay blessed.
rebel eye 