I've had exposure to some better things in life.

And I still think I deserve them.

I don't feel guilty about existing, and about wanting better things.

But I don't necessarily mean "better consumer goods" by "better things."

I mean "better things" like more money (not to spend, but to save and apply towards wealth-building); better health; work which challenges and develops my strengths; the respect of people who also impress me as having good judgment; and especially those elusive, fulfilling sexual relationships I keep hearing about.

And especially, especially, healthy radical life extension, because I'd like to try my hand at the kinds of work which don't exist yet, like, say, rearranging the solar system to make it more habitable for human-derived organisms, as astrophysicist Fritz Zwicky recommended.

I thought about this as a contrast to the deprived hillbilly grandparents I had on my mother's side, and the petty bourgeois grandparents on my father's side. (My dad's father practiced law in small Oklahoma towns, while dad's mother owned small but unthriving businesses like beauty parlors, until she got a job managing the PX, as a civilian, at Fort Sill in the years before her retirement. My father came from a slightly better class of people, in other words.)

Three of my four grandparents, now all deceased, seemed like basically decent people (not the country lawyer, however). But I could tell even as a child that they didn't have much going for them. It never occurred to me while growing up that I could go to one of them for advice, for example.

Well, I don't want to hang with undistinguished people like my grandparents. I consider that experience "spiritually depleting," for want of a better term, though of course worse people exist. I can't see how someone could go into a career dealing with heavy-duty spiritual depleters like criminals, drug addicts, homeless people and other derelicts (the constituency of many liberal politicians). I want to hang with competent, successful, efficient people who show that humans can accomplish something other than just sitting on the porch all day and talking about other undistinguished people. I consider the best company I can associate with as a key element in the "better things" I want from life. The better things in life supply me with spiritual fuel and reward the effort to keep on existing.