Last night while I was in bed, futilely trying to fall asleep, I began listening to songs on my Spotify play list. As I scrolled through the list, different periods of my life came into focus. I realized that here is the catalogue of my life. As I hear a tune, my mind rolls back time to what I was doing or what this song meant to me when I heard it. It was then that I was struck with an idea: use your play list as subjects for the blog. So, without further ado, here is the first song. Apeman.
This song is by no means a favorite. But I keep it because it reminds me to be humble. So much of my young adulthood was spent in the delusion of thinking I was exceptional. I had great thoughts. My mind was unique. I had insights that were beyond the grasp of mere mortals.
Thank god I never had the urge to run for public office. I could have been trapped in a feedback loop that fed this illusion. Lucky for me, time wore me down. Things happened…or didn’t happen in many cases. People around me kept moving forward. But I was stuck. I was just hours, days, weeks, months from the next promotion or breakthrough or accolade. But they never came. As it turns out, I was common, fairly common. “Compared to the flowers and the birds in the trees, I am an apeman.”
For a good decade, I was angry. I thought the world was unfair. I was cheated. In reality, I was living a common life of white privilege. But because I could never catch that brass ring, I was miserable. I had a voracious appetite for praise. When it did not come, I began to devour myself mentally.
This song represents a turning point in my thinking. It is an old song from the Kinks. But I stumbled onto it right about the time I read my first book on Buddhism. What really resonated with me was the idea that the root of suffering was desire. Not just for stuff, or sex, or power…but all of it. The more I want, the less fulfilled I felt and the more I suffered.
It was realizing that I was an apeman, that helped me dig out of my hole.
