Pondering Charlie the Coyote and Lack of Scarce Resources

Do human’s (some, anyway, I’m sure not all) set our expectations for ourselves and for life too high?  What I mean, is, have we reached a place in human development where the basic needs of life (food, water, shelter, air, reproduction, etc) become givens, so extraneous needs have been promoted to necessary facets, rather than perks, of life?

I’ll start out with an example, take you through the derivation of this thought.  Last night, I was walking my dog Roger (for those of you who don’t know, I have a German-Shepherd and Black Lab mix, five month old, 55 pound puppy named Roger…to see pics go to myspace.com/jonah14646) around my complex.  While he was “doing his business”, I turned around to find myself staring at two coyotes.  I ran over and hooked Roger to his leash, interrupting amidst a squeeze out  (I saw the coyotes before he did) then I squawked like a crazy chicken (which in retrospect wasn’t the best menacing response) and jumped around, hoping to scare them.  It didn’t work.  For the next frantic blocks, the two coyotes appeared to be working in tandem to separate me from barking, growling puppy.  In the end we made it safely on my home-side of my front fence.  Before going in the house, I looked out and saw the coyotes take a seat on my across-the-street neighbor’s lawn.

My question, last evening and this morning, surrounded my disbelief that the coyotes were not intimidated by my presence.  At the very least, my chicken-dance should have evidenced my mental instability, thus motivating them to find a less animated prey.  Roger is 55 pounds and has a menacing bark.  Both coyotes were smaller than he.  Why didn’t this scare them?  It wasn’t until this morning when I told my neighbor Julie the story and she said, “well, maybe they were really hungry”, did it make more sense.  That comment spring-boarded my thoughts to humans and our expectations versus coyotes and theirs.

To parallel this topic, I point to another Roger incident.  My dog trainer at Petsmart told me that Roger is a very intelligent dog, and not only should I aim to exhaust him physically, but I need to figure out ways to exhaust him mentally.  If he’s bored, in body or mind, then he becomes unmanageable.

Why are humans not happy with having a roof over their head, something to eat and drink as many times a day as they want, the ability to reproduce and raise our children in relatively safe environments (especially in America)?  Is it because of our elevated intelligence levels that we create “higher” demands on life?  Not only do we have to have enough money to eat, but we need to amass as much money as possible.  Not only do we have to have a roof over our heads, but this home needs to be the nicest in the neighborhood, must shock and awe our friends when they come over for wine and cheese night.  Not only do we need water, but it must be “spring mountain” water and fresh and cold.  Not only do we need to find a partner to reproduce, but we demand love in our relationships, and for God’s sake, the sex must be mind-blowing.

Are these expectations beyond the scope of basic needs raised because of our higher intelligence?

My life goal is to be a professional writer.  I want my work to be in libraries, to be talked about as “great art” long after my kids’s kids are dead.  I want to explore the outer regions of humanity and push the envelope of the written word.  I want to make movies that move people, that stick in their minds like “The Wrestler” did for me last night.  I’ve sacrificed relationships for this goal, sacrificed time spent with family, sacrificed my personal well-being and health and many of the other basic needs to pursue this goal.  Why do I do this?  I have a home, I eat and drink as much as I want, I will reproduce someday, I have security.  So why don’t I sit around on my laurels and enjoy the fruit of my labors?  Why do I set goals for myself beyond the realm of life necessity and pursue these goals to the detriment of my well-being?  What drives humans to these ends?

I wonder if the two coyotes from last night were given three square meals a day, a nice, warm den, an unlimited supply of bottled water, and a nice partner to make as many babies as they wish what they would do with their days.  Would they sit in the shade of a bush and lick themselves all day?  Or would they decide that their neighbor Carl the Coyote has a nicer den than they and try to come up with a way to “move on up”?  Would they ponder the constant bickering between the squirrels and the birds in a local tree over a the supply of acorns and try to come up with a way ameliorate this fighting?  Would they decide to sit down, really commit, to making the great coyote nation novel?  Would they organize a couple of other bored coyotes to invade Saddam Coyote’s territory and remove him as pack leader in order to secure the richest grazing lands in the valley?

If scarce resources were eliminated, what would happen?

Post Goal Setting Malaise: Learning to Lick Yourself Where It Counts

My primary goal for the past two years has been to gain acceptance into graduate school.  Everything I’ve done in my life, every action, at its core, has been streamlined to this singular focus.  Whether working on my writing projectss (those who know me understand the necessity for the extra ‘s’, as I am working four things at once, the consummate ADD creator), working extra shifts in Aussie Hell in order to stash money in my E-Trade account (www.etrade.com), taking writing classes and attending writing workshops to mine for contacts who could potentially be recommenders and/or MFA insiders and/or personal inspirers and/or sound-boards and/or guidance counselors, cutting back all but necessary expenses (though, with the economy where its at, I’m considering giving up water and electricity to save my bottom line), submitting to lit mags, volunteering at Boys and Girls Club of Greater Phoenix (http://www.bgcmp.org/howyou.htm), hosting writing workshops at local libraries, performing editing work for writers pro bona, and several other details too revealing to expose here, I have one eye in the present and the other on how this will improve my MFA applications.

Last Monday, I sent out the lot of my graduate school applications.  I know, you’re happy for me.  I will know in March whether I achieved my goal (fingers and toes and eyes crossed).  My question now is: okay, I’ve achieved my goal; now what do I do?

So far I’ve come up with sleeping, playing video games, reading, catching up on all the TV I’ve missed in the last two years, drinking, exercising my dog, spending unhealthy amounts on the Internet (no, not all porn, thank you), taking walks, listening to the radio, writing blogs (well, in this case, the ‘s’ is mis-leading because this is the first blog I’ve written in weeks), working extra just to alleviate the boredom, searching for the perfect rocking chair, watching movies, and drinking…did I mention drinking?

What does one do when your primary goal is achieved?  Set another one, I suppose.  Maybe I’m going through a state of post goal setting depression, but I can’t think of another one.  My life for two years has been singular focused, with pretty much every (almost) waking minute dedicated to one goal.  How do you find another?  Where does one go to purchase a new goal?  Does Wal-Mart have a Goal Aisle?

Maybe this thought process–set-goal, achieve goal, set another goal, achieve goal, set another goal–is uniquely American.  Maybe this idea of goal setting is our society’s way of forcing us to chase our tails.  I doubt my parents had many goals in the 1960’s.  Unless, you count: buy pot, get high, go see Janis Joplin, as goals.  Now that I think about it, maybe those are goals.  Maybe my problem is I’m searching out “Big, Life Goals” and not setting smaller, day-to-day, goals.  Maybe I’ve been so obsessed with this one idea that I have to train my brain to feel gratitude for life’s simplistic gifts.  Like right now, for instance.  My goal was to write something today.  It doesn’t have to be the scene in my novel that will lock my Pulitzer Prize (just thinking about the necessity of such scene makes me want to break out my bottle of Glen Livet…another goal!).  I’ve written something today.  Sure, it’s a non-sensical, rambling blog that no one will read and the minute few that do (HI MOM!) will gain no better sense of life or themselves by having done so.  But, my goal was to write something.  And I did.  Yeah me!

I’m sitting in my driveway in my rocking chair (which I did manage to find, on the side of the road in a trash pile if you can believe it) in the sunshine (seventy degrees and sunny in Arizona today) watching Roger (my dog, for those that do not know) chase leaves across the asphalt and lick himself and this self-actualization has dawned on me.  Goals aren’t necessarily these Earth-shattering things: run for city council, find a wife, buy a house, have a baby, get married, win the lotto, make a million bucks, get a promotion, sleep with the perfect ten at work, write the “great American novel”, sell a screenplay, climb Mount Everest, play professional baseball…etc.  Goals can be little things: clip your toenails, go grocery shopping, hug your mother, tell someone you love them, say hi to your neighbor, sit outside in the sunshine and watch your dog lick himself.  I guess Roger had a goal today, too.