“Curb Exchange,” a fact that amused me greatly. I felt there was something flawless about the terminology, something wickedly funny and savagely true. It inspired visions of drug deals, prostitution, and rampant capitalism, all in one fell swoop. It was poetry.
From there, I continued my investigation, an oddly feverish pursuit that wound up leading me into a broader understanding of the global economy. What I found, by and large, tended to be riveting and deeply disturbing—not that this was any big surprise.
I ingested a surreal assortment of sobering facts and figures, most of which were difficult to actually comprehend. I learned, for example, that there are approximately 500 million people in Asia, Africa, and Latin America who are living in what the World Bank refers to as “absolute poverty”; that every thirty seconds, 200 people die of hunger; that for the price of one Patriot missile, a school full of hungry children could eat lunch every day for five years; that half of the world’s human beings are struggling to survive on the equivalent of two dollars per day and that half of that half are struggling to survive on the equivalent of one dollar per day; that 1.5 billion people in the world don’t have access to clean drinking water; that approximately one fifth of America’s food goes to waste every year—the equivalent of about 130 pounds per person; and that the amount of food wasted annually by Americans could feed 49 million hungry people.
Eventually, I wore myself out. I put the books down.
I sat back in my chair and looked at the television.
Jeopardy! was on.
I was a twenty-two-year-old American with $22,500 in my checking account.
I had no idea what I was doing with my life.
My ex-girlfriend had killed herself, and she had once been pregnant with my child.
Had she gone through with the pregnancy, our kid would have been starting preschool soon.
Another person I read about over the holidays: Siddhartha Gautama. A fairly obvious thing to do in the wake of a trauma, perhaps. But nevertheless, there I was.
I took comfort in the fact that Gautama was an actual man. He was born into a caste of warrior aristocrats sometime around the year 560 B.C., in the Himalayan foothills of what is now Nepal. He enjoyed a sheltered childhood in a pleasure-filled palace, oblivious to the miseries of society. He partied a lot and enjoyed the company of several concubines.
Though the specifics of his life history are admittedly cloudy, most religious scholars seem to agree that Siddhartha had excelled in sports and the martial arts, while also enjoying a comprehensive education in literature, religion, philosophy, and agriculture management. He married a cousin of his at the age of sixteen. Her name was Yashodhara, and she bore him children.
Eventually, however, despite all of this comfort and stimulation, Siddhartha became restless. His charmed existence wasn’t enough to satisfy him. He tired of his palace, his concubines, his family. He tired of his parties. He tired of his trust fund. He had it all, yet he was deeply unhappy.
One night, against the wishes of his father, Siddhartha snuck out of the palace and wandered into the streets. Here is what he saw:
1 A sick man
2 A poor man
3 A beggar
4 A corpse
Shortly thereafter, Siddhartha freaked out, essentially. He abandoned his former way of life and dedicated himself to solving the riddle of suffering endemic in all human beings. He even abandoned his wife and family. Naked and alone, he set out into the countryside in search of true enlightenment. He became a wandering ascetic.
Naturally, his life in those days was pretty bleak. He stumbled around, starving and nude, mumbling to himself. He slept on a bed of thorns in the jungle. He held his breath until he passed out, hoping to unlock the mysteries of existence. He went on like this for about six years.
In the end, the experiment failed. Without any food in his belly, Siddhartha couldn’t really think straight. Eventually, he came to believe that a life of complete denial wasn’t a good idea, and neither was a life of total indulgence. The trick, he realized, was to live a life of balance. There was, he realized, a Middle Way.
Pleased with his newfound knowledge, Siddhartha went and sat in the shade of a large pipal tree for a round of intensive meditation. While sitting there, he had a series of incredible epiphanies. He became enlightened.
In the midst of this epiphanic trance, Siddhartha managed to reduce human existence to Four Noble Truths. Those Four Noble Truths are:
1 All humans suffer.
2 All human suffering is caused by human desire,particularly the desire that impermanent things be permanent.
3 Human suffering can be ended by ending human desire.
4 Desire can be ended by following the “Eightfold Noble Path”: right understanding, right thought, right speech, right action, right livelihood, right effort, right mindfulness, and right concentration.
Siddhartha went on to spend the rest of his life teaching the Four Noble Truths and the Eightfold Noble Path to anyone who would listen. He died at the age of eighty. His devotees generally believe that he passed into a state of nirvana at the moment of his death.
nirvana n.
1 Often cap:Buddhism: The ineffable ultimate in which one has attained disinterested wisdom and compassion.Hinduism: Emancipation from ignorance and the extinction of all attachment.
2 An ideal condition of rest, harmony, stability, or joy.
These days, Siddhartha is commonly referred to by his nickname: Buddha.
It was only a matter of time before my parents and I wound up having “The Conversation” again. It happened on a Tuesday afternoon, a couple of days after the dawn of the new millennium. We were sitting in the kitchen, eating lunch. My sisters were off at the shopping mall, exchanging Christmas gifts, and my parents took it upon themselves to inquire about my plans for the future, my thoughts on steady income, an agenda, a career. It was here that I broke the news about the sale of my Exxon stock and my subsequent astronomical success on the open market. At that point, the ride was over. I figured I had nothing to lose. I came clean, told them everything. My parents were flabbergasted, to put it mildly. My mother asked me if it was legal. My father, though he tried not to show it, was fairly impressed.
“Well, shit,” he said.
Naturally, they were curious about what I was going to do next. I told them that I wasn’t sure, that my only real plan at the moment was to head back to Boulder and reevaluate my options. I told them that I didn’t have the mind to be making any big decisions for a while, and for the moment, that was enough to end the inquiry. They didn’t press me any further. In truth, they’d been good about that since Amanda’s death. They hadn’t really pressed
