SOC on a Friday

It's a beautiful sunny afternoon. I'm sitting here in an air conditioned tea house, gazing out the plate glass windows at the bustling city, mountains actually visible in the background; the typically all-encompassing smog is absent today. The remains of my $20 mid afternoon snack lay before me. They will go to waste.

The weather is the stuff of dreams, for a man who spends most of his days out in the world. California, despite how much I might bitch about it, is in this respect superior to any other place I have ever lived in or visited.

I am a lucky soul. Despite any personal headaches that I have, no matter how serious and costly they are or may be, I am at very little risk of personal injury or death. And though I admit that compared to my peers, my risk is exponentially higher, let us speak in broader terms.

I'm mostly whole, ignoring some relatively minor persistent damage from injuries sustained in the past. I'm not fighting in some distant war zone, for a cause I know little or nothing about, nor am I fighting to protect my home and/or family from oppressive invaders bent on wiping me and all those like me off the face of the planet for some nameless and intangible "god," or vice versa. My income already puts me above 99% of the rest of the world, meaning I am winning the struggle for the scarce resources available to the entire human population.

The water just served to me by the pretty waitress(thank you) is refreshingly cold and guaranteed potable. The food I just ate has an extremely low probability of being anything but fresh. I live in a big house, I have few enemies(and those I have, are not physically murderous, and even if they are, I'm paranoid enough to make it difficult for them(I hope)), and I have companionship enough to keep me from falling further into this psychopathy others claim I have(just because I don't care doesn't mean I'm psychotic, it means its not important, interesting, or relavant enough for me to care about).

The fact that I can sit here and can just not work for a few hours, eat overpriced snacks, drink overpriced tea that was shipped here from half the world away, and just be idle, yet not suffer a single consequence is amazing to me.

The $20 I spent, I can make more, yet it's enough to feed a family for a month in the Sub-Saharan territories.
The time I spent writing this, what work that was to be done has been delegated to my minions.

I am incredibly fortunate.

And yet, I know, it can all change in a moment, and it troubles me.

But not this moment. This moment, I can be content.

There will be time for strategizing and contingency planing later.

Let me have this moment in peace.