A life unlived

Why do so many people with skills, knowledge, and motivation, never fulfill their true potential?

Why can't more of us be farmers, inventors, artists, craftsmen, tour guides, entrepreneurs? Why are so many of us condemned to live our life serving the Deep State nexus of government, fossilized bureaucratic institutions, and large corporations?

Why can't people live their lives the way they want. Why can't we do what we want with our life? What stops us?

It is not for lack of imagination or knowledge or effort or motivation or contacts. It is not because people have unrealistic expectations or are afraid to take risks.

People want to do what they enjoy doing. They want to make money from doing what they enjoy doing. They don't want to have to work 8 hours a day in a soul-destroying job with barely livable wage which leaves them no time to do anything else they enjoy.

JOB is an acronym for Just Over Broke. After taxes, cost of living, commuting are taken out, you will be Just Over Broke. You will always be underpaid, unappreciated, and live a life unlived in a job. This holds true for conscientious people irrespective of the level of job you have.

People live a life unlived because there is no critical mass of demanding intelligent consumers.

Most consumer's needs are already being met to an adequate level by established corporations and service providers. There is "art" for sale at low cost in super markets. There is good enough convenience food available for delivery to your home. There are good enough consumer products and services available everywhere.

Consumers are undemanding, and their needs are being met with good-enough products.

Unless consumers demand quality products which are inspired, authentic, genuinely good, genuinely environmentally friendly, made with love and passion, their needs will be fulfilled with uninspired 'met too' barely adequate generic mass-produced products and services.

Let us ask ourselves, why are we buying barely good enough products and services? Food is unhealthy, mis-labeled, and poisoned with pesticides and chemicals, cold drinks are luke-warm, and fast food is not fast.

When and why did we start accepting mediocrity and started queueing up for it?

As an example, if a farmer or an urban entrepreneur wants to start growing fruits and vegetables the way they were grown in the good old days, his worry is will there be enough people who will buy it? Organic has become a meaningless marketing buzzword. How does the farmer or entrepreneur get the value of his endeavor across? Consumers will care, if they knew.

'Will anyone be interested, will it sell' is a major concern for many people starting out on new endeavors.

Good marketing is crucial. If you are setting out to be an entrepreneur or an inventor, pay special attention to marketing. Equally crucial is for us to be informed consumers, not only so that we get good products and services, but also to support the passionate dreamer and entrepreneur in all of us.

Without this support from good consumers, we will all be condemned to a life of servitude consuming and producing good-enough mass-produced products and services for each other.

Next time you go spend your money as a consumer, spend it carefully not on faceless, nameless mass-produced disposable products, but on high quality, inspired, authentic, genuine products and services that are built to last for a long time rather than your next paycheck.

Don't just buy the plastic suitcase from the supermarket, look for handmade quality suitcases which look and feel special. Don't just buy the fake leather couch or shoes, find a source of quality couch or quality shoes which fit you like a glove.

Buy it for life, not just for this month or year. Be an intelligent discerning consumer.

What goes around comes around. Someday, the same intelligent discerning consumers will come to buy what you have to sell, and save you from a life unlived.

"Their products have no spirit to them. Their products have no spirit or enlightenment to them. They are very pedestrian. And the sad part is that most customers don't have a lot of that spirit either. But the way we are going to ratchet up our species is to take the best and spread it around everybody, so that everybody grows up with better things and starts to understand the subtlety of these better things" - Steve Jobs.


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