Littered paper on the stands read of long tales, smeering stories for the ears of those fancied by the scent of celebrity. It is by vicarious indulgence, living secondhand the lives of others, which excites the dull and null senses of the multitude. The plastic magazines pile up daily and switch hands by vendors who sell them wholesale to the common idler. The root of the heart has stifled shut, atrophied and neglected of the earth’s fruits, fed now only by an ever intoxicating medium of sensational tedium. Without consumption, left to their own devices, a short time passes before a withdrawal ensues and soon compels a man to search from cupboards to beneath the carpets for pearls of gossip.

Where is the active force which makes lives naturally fulfilling? It is by a lack of inherent purpose that men settle for the crude materiality which the modern mediums offer to abundant supply. The havoc in the halls of shopping malls, with an outrageous demand cried out by the common voice of the mob, creates the fluidity of the market of consumer satisfaction. This is where the children of potential fall into the tangled titillations of what has been made newly available for immediate consumption. They walk in short strides over shiny tiles and roar through the streets in sparkling machines, always competing with one another by the show of new toys.

We are made susceptible to everything which captures our eyes and often lose ourselves in the pleasure of it. From this to that, we seek and search in order to satiate this insatiable appetite. In such a way, with attachment to whatever strings along to our loitering condition one inch farther in time, eating away whatever is left in the day, our lives speed past through the years. Of the 8,760 hours in the year, one third is used up in sleep, another third in reaping bread, and the last bit lost in listening to the choirs of silverlined pleasures. If a man completes this entire cycle and on his deathbed is truly satisfied with what time he has afforded for his own personsal unfoldment, then that is a miracle.

Everyone for themselves has to draw a line on what they are fed from the outside in order to begin to look deep within themselves on what it is that truly brings them purpose and contentment. It is the void pouring into the void to live a life without an intent in your pocket which reflects the purpose and acknowledgment of why you are here in the first place. Without that, devoid of an active intent, we are merely the actions of what we find ourselves doing. There is no reason behind the how; only the what, where, who and why matter in such a world. Yet it is in this how, the intent behind the surface of everything that is done, which brings us genuine satisfaction through a natural appetite for all that is best in life.

A man can pause himself during the day and wonder ‘what is it I am doing?’ He can walk through the streets and appreciate the details so that they feed him as impressions to note rather than as merely familiarized phenomena. That which is taken for granted becomes decreasingly nutritious to our emotional state and therefore goads us back to what will feed us, even if it is the junk food of perception. A man must eat something of higher substance lest he fall into a state of nullity and become truly a walking creature of nuts and bolts, living dimly for the sake of only survival and social appreciation. It is somehow understood, if not purely subconsciously, that we are all meant to work at a higher level than what plain advertising suggests.