Race to the Bottom

I’ve known some people who enjoyed good beer and good food, but who believed that they should be selling all they had to feed the poor. I’ve known some people who believed that life should be a “race to the bottom”, that it was unjust for us to enjoy good things while others were suffering. And yet they enjoyed good things.

They weren’t hypocrites. They honestly believed this, and they honestly believed that it was impossible for them to live up to their own standards.

When I was a kid, this kind of inconsistency really bothered me. I’ve always been a bit of a fundamentalist, so I wanted to understand how to live a consistent life. Did I need to starve myself so others could eat? Did I need to kill myself so others could live? Did I need to sacrifice all my belongings so others could thrive?

Because if so, I could do that. I could be completely consistent, even if it killed me. And if that was what was good, then it was definitely what I was going to do.

I found, however, that this was not really what people wanted from me. When it came down to it, people really wanted me to take care of myself, to work on becoming a better person, to find ways to strengthen others by becoming stronger myself.

This meant I shouldn’t literally give all my belongings to feed the poor. It meant that I shouldn’t actually race to the bottom. It meant that I actually needed to learn to enjoy good things.

When you’re a fundamentalist kid with the weight of the world on your shoulders, it can be hard to do this without feeling incredibly guilty. But eventually, I learned how. Because I realized that life wasn’t nearly as inconsistent and conflicted as people made it out to be.

It wasn’t about finding ways to suffer. It was about finding ways to do good. And doing good didn’t mean feeling guilty. Or being absent from life.

Ultimately, I realized that enjoying life was actually part of what was necessary for me to make the world better.

Life isn’t a win-lose proposition. Life is a joint endeavor where we can all lift each other up. And my friends didn’t need to feel like there was an impossible standard that they were always going to fail to live up to; they needed to realize that eating and drinking and enjoying yourself is actually part of embracing life, and embracing life is the only way we’re ever going to make the world a better place.