The Luv Doc: A Real Pleasurecraft

Dear Luv Doc,

I love so much about my boyfriend. He is sweet, kind, thoughtful, fun, funny, good looking, creative, intelligent – the whole package, EXCEPT, he isn't very ambitious. He is totally content with his hourly-wage job in the food industry, playing music, hanging out with his friends drinking beer and taking our dogs on walks in the greenbelt. He says he isn't interested in having any additional stress in his life and that he has everything he needs – except that everything includes a house that I am paying for, plus insurance and quite a few other big-ticket items. I truly don't want him to change, but is it wrong of me to want him to want more? Or at the very least earn his keep?

– Rita

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You know, Rita, there is probably some measured, thoughtful response that is appropriate here, something that would recommend career counseling or a life coach or some sort of hippie retreat that involves mud baths or ayahuasca, but fuck that shit. All of it implies that your boyfriend is not a fully formed human being – at least to the extent that a human being is ever fully formed.

Ambition is not an admirable quality, it's a tolerable neurosis at best ... barely tolerable. It's the kind of existential hubris that got us kicked out of the Garden. Just think, if Eve hadn't bitten that apple, maybe we wouldn't feel compelled to try to figure out the universe for the next few trillion millennia. Yeah, we're not even close. We might be feeling pretty cocky for having cracked the genome, but that's just one page in an infinite library of volumes. Rest assured that long before we finish the chapter, the robots will have killed us all and, somewhat ironically I imagine, condemned themselves to the same Sisyphean fate.

So, we keep swinging our axes and shoving our shovels and banging out our code in the name of progress and evolution when an equally likely scenario is that these endeavors are just games thrown into the cosmic playpen for our amusement, and that maybe the whole reason for our existence (as if it even needs a reason) is to just relax and enjoy ourselves. That idea is a pretty thorough rogering for the go-getters, but something we'd all do well to keep in mind.

So back to your boo: You said yourself he is the whole package. Well, maybe you can't afford the whole package. I am not just talking about the money, either. I mean, maybe you need the partial package that your neurosis allows. You know, one that works 12 hours a day, drives a Lexus, and is kind of a douche. That package might be well within your means. Or, you could pony up just a little more by coming to an understanding that the currency of human worth is emotional, not financial. That way you can enjoy the luxury of the pleasurecraft that's already parked in your garage.