GOOD AND PLENTY

This is more than the name of a candy. It is a dream. It is what we wish were reality. To have our version of yummy as often and in as much quantity as our heart desires.

Of course we would find obtaining the candy a lot easier than achieving this vision. Plus trying to turn this into a goal of life becomes the kind of thing if you talk about it others would call it being greedy.

And that is the part that annoys me the most. I mean most people are encouraged I think to try and succeed. We even celebrate excellence. But, BUT, nobody seems to respect an arrogant winner. You are expected if you want to be popular to be humble or modest in some way.

At least that seems to be my perception. For me that is essential in order to guard my elected butt so I can survive and win the next election.

So publicly I act modest and attribute the win to all my hard working staff (all one of him) as well as the voters. Then privately with my pal Hugo Muckraker we sit around and soak up some refreshment and then allow ourselves to celebrate with a lot more honesty.

There is something truly disturbing to me about the idea that success is a good thing, but selfishness isn’t. It just seems that you are more prone to be a winner as a tiger than a lamb. So why pretend?

And frankly what I see is that a whole lot of places where people do act selfish and do win by having that kind of winner’s mentality. We all understand it privately, but just can’t openly call it a good thing.

So am I asking us to do that? Um yes and no. See I understand the nature of social dynamics enough to appreciate how at the very heart of our motives lies the need to have it all. We want to be the best and we also want to be thought of as good.

That all gets muddled up in a ball of fickle reactions and impetus and in the end what we gets is way too much hypocrisy and silliness. Which of course I don’t expect to change.

What I’m toying with here is the simple priority in thought that perhaps to make things easier we could come up with some outlet of truth to express what we try by social image to deny. Let some occupation be treated as okay for being greedy and selfish. Then with that occupation getting all the glory everyone else could be left to feel morally superior.

And you could make that profession the fall guy for everything imaginable. Of course there would have to be a fee paid to the ones who agreed to such social liabilities. That seems only fair.

Alas I can imagine this idea will never quite get the following it deserves. So that means I’m stuck I guess. I’ll just have to continue playing the game by my own brand of rules and naturally I’ll get that extra compensation that I never tell anyone. Silent, but never broke is a motto I’ll always savor.