Money is a drag on abundance
And just wondering...is Ozempic a stealth anti-desire weapon?
vol. 6 issue 7
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Greetings,
Thanks for being here. New readers keep finding me, and I am glad to welcome you. I’m kinda low-key these days as currently I am archiving my previous materials for a book, so as far as what I am publishing now, there’s not a schedule or a theme, so much as just observations.
Here’s a helpful review of highlights from the past 5 years, if you are interested in what I have written previously about the intersection of corporate power, mental health, and democracy. I was more indignant then, just so you know.
Anyway, desire. What is it? Do you know what your most cherished one is? I’m 56 and didn’t think I knew what I want most from life and said as much to a good friend this weekend. I’m not upset about it, I told her, just curious.
But then as she patiently let me just kind of talk that out of my head, I realized I do know what I want. I want to be loved. Just be myself, and be with people who are happy I am among them. I want a community and I want to contribute to it. Not a big one, but big enough, and with a healthy threshold for goofy, and by that I mean, come as you are, unless you’re angling for something.
When I lived in Washington, I had a community, and I miss it, but I am too different now to be a part of that world. For one thing, I am too broke-ass to live in the luxury apartment building with views of the City’s northern, verdant Potomac River border with Virginia to the West and the National Cathedral to the South, and where I once was on the tenants’ board and was all-in for battling with management.
That was the lifestyle I led when I made my previous heart’s desire come true by fleeing, not gracefully I admit, my homemaker life in New Jersey, in my early 40s, and becoming a reporter in the national capital, really, against all odds if you knew how shitty I felt about myself most of the time. But I had a “now or never” moment that overrode my low self-esteem.
After last year’s joblessness, brokenness, and “technical” homelessness, because I didn’t really have a true home, just places that people let me stay in, I now am barely solvent, but my life feels abundant. I just need more income to keep paying off the debts of failure and avoid homelessness again, especially since you know, it’s unamerican to be poor, and in Kentucky where I now reside, it’s also against the law to be homeless, so I’d better keep on that money thing.
I wonder how much longer I will have to factor this imposition into my otherwise abundant life.
The last time I was this broke and confused was just before, as if by magic, I found my dream job in DC, and actually got it. That’s why I was wondering what my heart’s desire now is. Maybe I can make it happen again.
Before, my desire catalyzed me to manifest my version of the American Dream — and I consider I largely succeeded — which is funny, because it was that success and the confusion and pain it brought which made me start this publication where I have unraveled the threads of the whole star-spangled tapestry, for myself anyway.
It was my desire, and I am proud of myself for realizing it, but I never really settled into it; I just couldn’t stop thinking I was supposed to be “more”. Looking back, I understand that what I was struggling with was the received image of who I was supposed to be that was superimposed on me by the status quo, on us all really, when what I value personally was never in synch with that expectation.
That’s why I asked, what is desire? Are ours truly ours? Are they dreams that are real, or received images of who we “should” be that are not real? When we desire something, we have to engage our creativity to make it happen. But why am I creating shit and participating in situations I don’t value?
To that end, my friend who’d been hearing me out, made a funny but intriguing point about the Ozempic, and other semaglutides, phenomenon. Greatly simplifying the science here, what the weight-loss drug does is essentially dampen desire. Will the coefficient of this medical weight-loss craze be less curiosity about what we authentically desire because the neuronal pathways of connecting our imagination with our capacity for action, our willpower, will disintegrate?
Seems like a perfect set-up for making it easy to manipulate people. Not to get conspiratorial here, but really, who benefits from a nation of people without a spark? And once the spark is gone, does it ever come back?
When I was desirous before, I wanted fame and money. Now, I want to be seen for who I am, which is not fame. It is opposite that; there is no striving. And money is just some unnatural imposition I have to think about because the System demands it, but it has nothing to do with the joy and fulfillment I have every single day in my life, joy that is not transactional in any way.
What makes my life so abundant is as much to do with what I don’t have as it is with what I do have. For one thing, I don’t have any assholes in my life on a regular basis anymore. I didn’t deliberately seek a jerk-free life, but as I have been doing whatever seems most natural to me in the moment, I have been accumulating not money-wealth, but a wealth of stimulating and memorable experiences shared with people who are a pleasure to be around. It feels like love, so I will say it is. It also feels pure.
Good company, it seems, is an unexpected benefit of listening to and acting according to my authentic self.
And also what I have in abundance is natural beauty. I am now almost always outside in nature, either because I am working with it, or because it is where I seek recreation. Nature is where my values are rooted. I see that now, and I live it easily.
The result is that my life is fulfilling: What I desire, I am increasingly surrounded by. I do wish to have a deeper community to share my abundance with, and I am confident I will. Money is all that is missing, but it’s not what I desire. It’s what the status quo says I am supposed to desire, and I am starting to think that our believing money is that vital is a mass enchantment, a trick of the mind.
In any case, money doesn’t build a community, so having the money won’t get me my heart’s desire. It just pays the bills.
Peace,
Whitney
I am currently grappling with the whole question of desire at present, as I seem to have lost all of mine. And now that I am being forced to move house after 17 years in a safe haven, I am reviewing everything. Prior to my current safe haven, I lived a hundred different lives, like you have been doing; 42 homes in my 42 years; never with a sense of belonging.
So the question of desire is highly relevant.
Do I stay in the job that provides a reasonable income and means I can afford to have a ridiculously expensive but nothing special roof over my head, or do I shake everything up, since that appears to be what the universe is pushing me to do?
By the way, I’m one of those mid 60s babies with the Saturn/Chiron/Ceres opposite Uranus/Pluto axis in my chart, currently experiencing the Saturn return. The last time this axis was majorly triggered at the Uranus opposite Uranus with Saturn opposing, my younger sister died, I inherited a child, experienced workplace bullying and went through bankruptcy all at the same time.
I’ve gained stability in these 17 years and addressed alcohol dependency (sober 10 years now), and had found a comfort zone.
Clearly that comfort zone has been illusory, at least in part, so I’m buckling up for more change and the trust that I’m being forced to rediscover myself again.
Your shared experiences help.
In regards to Ozempic, I suspect it is just another bandaid solution to a greater issue of rampant suppressed fulfilment, which imo is the fuel to addictions, including sugar.
Plus, the pill (although it has its advantages) is also a desire killer.
Stay well.
Carol x
Interesting idea about Ozempic...but I think it may be a shallow rabbit hole. All the other stuff, though, how much more Right On could you be? As they say in certain silly circles, I LOVE THIS FOR YOU. xo