Seriously folks… $11 for dry cleaning? How much do you spend on clothing? Just stop to consider that that shirt cost you $150 and if you clean it 20 times per year, it will cost you another $220. So now, in one year you have a shirt in which you have invested $370. Really? There is nothing in your life or in the life of others that would have benefited if you spent $50 on the shirt and spent $.99 on cleaning? Now you are out $70 and still have $300 left to do good.
Really though, the point isn’t about shirts or my soapbox about doing good, but rather is about our egos and how far they can take us. Look at the ego that rationalizes these expenditures. Whether its dry cleaning, beer, scotch, dope, cars, candy, shoes, or hair brushes, we fear death of our ego and so our ego builds up our existence and identity signature as someone that has beautiful handmade $150 shirts on which we spend silly amounts of money cleaning in order to look extra crispy and for others to know we spend that kind of money on our shirts or to attract a mate that “thinks” that some aspect of that is important or that it symbolizes importance.
When you start to break these things down, it becomes more and more obvious that our lives are built on fantasies and are one big house of cards that can be blown apart in an instance. We spend all of our time trying to keep the cards from falling rather than realizing that the cards themselves(much less the house) aren’t even real.
Examine your “shirts”. What thing is it that you use to make you feel real and be important? Why does it make you feel that way? How is it important? It can even be working for a charity and making sure everyone knows you do. Whatever it is that you use to fill yourself with your existence and reason for being is a lie. Examine the why and the how of it. Question yourself over and over again and realize that it is what it is which means it certainly isn’t you. You don’t exist in the way you see you or others see you. You died a moment ago.
Destroy your house of cards. Foreclose on your fantasy and you’ll find so much more…
