THE PERVERSITY OF HUMAN NATURE

I sit in front of this computer on a beautiful Friday morning. Quiet, uncluttered - a perfect time to write. And yet I'm fidgeting, antsy, unable to really come up with a decent thought or sentence. Why? Here I have all the conditions I've said I want for my own contentment, and I'm not content.

I have a job that pays well and is interesting - and I'm bored. I have a decent stereo set and money to buy music - and either I want something louder, bigger, with more bells and whistles, or I'm ready to chuck the whole array because much of the music I've collected plays flat and clichd. And I'm sitting here writing all this, doing what I profess to love to do - and I want the page to fill up faster so I can get away from the desk and still say I've fulfilled my writing obligation for the day. Why? When's the contentment supposed to show up?

If constants of temperament exist in human nature, one must be that given sufficient means to satisfy our most important wants, those means will not suffice. The more we satisfy ourselves, the more our selves crave satisfaction, thus setting up a restless round of desire. I have nothing against this desire - I think its drive is often the only thing that ensures anything of important magnitude gets done. (And since another part of human nature is slothfulness, this restlessness keeps the blood from settling in the veins for too long.)

But just when you think you might be happy, that is, when what you want and what you have mesh, there comes sneaking in this attitude, this voice which says "Life is short and don't settle for anything, don't settle at all. If you think you have everything you want, then you're only fooling yourself. You never have everything you want, and if you think you do, you simply just don't know yourself well enough." So that long stretches of time to read and write eventually sour. It gets too quiet, too long-winded, and the original impulse that drove you to sit your ass down and feed the mind suddenly turns on you and makes you want to go to jump in the car.

When I have time to think about it (and when it is gone for some reason), I know where the impulse comes from, why it trips me up and keeps my waters churned. Another name for the impulse is just living itself. We are organisms dedicated to our own pleasure. But one of the effects of culture is to deaden that natural impulse so that we can get along without killing one another. (Freud

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