assignment 8 Jack Phillips

Fears: dying alone, the unknown
Annoyances: gossip, untrue rumours
Accomplishment: I once played FIFA for 16 hours straight (if that counts)
Confusions: Why we allow pieces of paper to control our entire lives
Sorrows: too personal for a blog
Dreams: get a job I can be proud of, have a family
Idiosyncrasies: I am literally just an amalgamation of annoying idiosyncrasies
Risks: jump out of an airplane (want)
Beloved possessions (then and now): Ohio State stuff (then and now), books (now)
Problems: laziness, procrastination, not finishing anyth

I have always been and will always be why we let our lives be controlled by various pieces of paper. Once you get into high school this trend starts, and our lives are centered around getting a diploma from high school. Then, once you have that, college degrees control your life for four years. Unfortunately, it doesn't end there. because even after that our lives revolve around making money. The average person will work 40 hours a week, five days a week, for over 40 years just for this paper money. Fortunately, there are only a few people who work this hard just to have the money, and most people are motivated by external means, like providing for a family or saving for retirement. But that doesn't change the fact that our lives revolve around money. There is a religion that pushes against this societal norm, Buddhists, but even the way they are set up is flawed. For god's sake, the first Buddha was a prince, and that makes sense why he was able to reject this norm and not worry about material goods, because he already had them. He had enough money where he never had to worry about material goods, so it is a little misleading when he basically said, "I reject material wealth, and look at how happy I am. If you reject material goods then you will too."