To Have or To Be, That Is My Question
I used to dream in Italian. Sadly, I wasn’t fluent in my dreams either. I spent my dream time trying to conjugate verbs. More specifically, I’d go over and over the verbs to be (essere) and to have (avere).
“Ho, Hai, Ha, Abbiamo, Avete, Hanno.” And with equal importance, I’d repeat, “Sono, Sei, รจ, Siamo, Siete, Sono.”
Over and over again so that “I have, You have, She has, We have, They have” flowed off my tongue just as easily as “I am, You are, He is, We are, They are.”
It wasn’t as if I was trying to create whole sentences so that I could one day say, “I am traveling to Italy with my boyfriend so that he can get a taste of the good life there.” Instead of my brain working out whole sentences, it was just focused on those two verbs.
For me, the question of to have and to be has always been at odds with each other. They compete for my attention in not just my dreaming life, but my waking one too. To have is about things, about materialism, about porcelain figurine collections and new cars and owning a house and 401k plans and health insurance and fabulous leather couches, new iPods and computers and big screen TVs.
I find this complicated. Like a goldfish, I think you should only have as many things as your bowl permits. If you need a storage space or a bigger house or apartment to store all your stuff, then it’s time to get rid of some of that extra stuff. Only… I really like having stuff. I like having books and comfortable furniture. I really like having a 401k plan.
But I really like to be, too. To be for me is about knowledge, insight, learning new things, going to have coffee and sitting for hours in a coffee shop, it’s about conversations with people, about education, culture, listening to music, watching movies, going on vacations. Being immersed in life and enjoying the now of it. This is less complicated. In fact, I have historically been really good at this one.
Years ago, my sister met a psychic and for Christmas that year, we all got the gift of going to this psychic, too. It was the year that we all learned a thing or two about our past lives. The psychic concentrated on the three that were supposed to be “informing” my present life. One: I was a scholar in the Middle Ages who had no material wealth, only a robe and an ability to sit around reading all day; two, I was a robber baron during the Industrial Revolution who made tons and tons of money, and had an enormous house with lots and lots of things in it; and, three, I was an inventor in the early part of the 20th century who created a revolutionary invention but was then screwed over by a group of rich greedy men in the patenting process (robber barons!!!).
Photo courtesy of the Library of Congress
See? I have a long-standing history with this dilemma and apparently I’m still being “informed” as I have a lot left to figure out. I’m either poor as a church mouse but highly educated (ahem), or rich beyond measure and an apparent bastard (damn it!).
I suspect a lot of this is about balance and trying to reach a happy medium between the two. Gray areas and balances are not my wheelhouse. But I’m trying. I tend to swing from one area (to have) to the next (to be) with gusto. It’s a little why my traveling has decreased but my comfortable furniture has increased. Both have occurred along the same timeline of my increased supply of technology devices and my decreased coffee shop time. I will admit that I have had a 401k for some time now and it has increased, too. Every so often I get a letter in the mail with my balance and for that moment, I’m pleased. Then I find my way back to the couch and read for a few hours.
