the bottom line

sometimes all of my search and desire to create meaning can be plowed over a bit by the bottom line: the bottom line that sometimes people are only focused on whatever bottom line they've chosen: money, their family (comprised of them and their kids), their career, their happiness, their life, their ideals, etc. it can be disheartening. true, we need to focus on all of those things. those things take a lot of attention.

and i don't know what the bottom line is, other than perhaps "do the right thing." the right thing, they say, is the hard thing. which doesn't always seem to be the right answer. it would be hard and not necessarily right to stay in an abusive relationship.

so the bottom line can be complex. not so much, i guess, when it just comes down to money. save money, make money. that can be the bottom line. but if money is it, then all we are are consumers/savers. there is more. there are relationships. some people say relationships are only to meet emotional needs. tit for tat. i like the idea of relationships as spiritual growth. i like the idea of growth. and then modern lingo could talk about what's sustainable. sustainable relationships, sustainable living... sometimes it seems scary to me what happens to relationships... people focus on partner-only, kids-only. true, we've got to budget our time, i suppose.

and i guess perhaps i have to grow out of some of my idealism. but if we don't have idealism, then we just have ideals. capitalism as an ideal is interesting, and i'm undecided about it, but it doesn't seem to be much about providing what's important to me. now, if i were more fully employed, i wouldn't have time and thought on my hands to be writing this. in fact, i don't really. i should be grading papers. thankfully my time with that is flexible. but only to a certain point. and that's the bottom line.