It doesn't really matter, in a positive way

A Reflection...

So I am sitting here at some hour. I am writing because I am unhappy about some junk going on in my life, and unless I am massively misinformed, so is most of the planet, so hey, target audience established... I am not a goth or emo or whatever they are called these days, I am far too fat to pull that look off... No, I have specific tangible things that make me unhappy from time to time.

I am getting late into my twenties now, it's become clear the the overarching plot of that age is to try to figure out what makes you the least miserable and how to make it so that that's what you spend most of your time doing. Well, that and challenging modern medicine's estimates of the maximum abuse a liver can take.

Some do this whole thing... harder, for lack of enthusiasm to Google a synonym, than others. It most likely has something to do with some buzz word like how 'well adjusted' one is. That specific one is BS, any truly well adjusted human being would jump off the Golden Gate at first glance of the state of the human race, but you get my point.

Most of us aren't Oprah babies, and we are all lucky that some parts of our brain still work despite all probability. So, getting to what I think I have learned from what I can remember of the foggy vague time that was my twenties: 

The most important thing is realizing that it doesn't matter, in a positive way. I am not going to jump into the cliche' pit from whence all reggae music is written. Like if you want to live in a house, you need to make money, if you want to eat, its money or those unfortunate cats you see on a busy road on a Saturday morning. What you don't have to do though, is work for anything you don't actually want.

If there is one thing that really pisses people off, it's when you tell them you don't care about a certain need. Just today I told someone I don't care about eating cooked meals. The result, one pissed off person. Why? I don't know. Perhaps they are unnaturally concerned with my diet. Maybe they are trapped in a life they think they have to live and my nonchalant dismissal of something integral to that undermines what value they had placed on a life that they would rather not at this late point admit to them self is a lie. Doesn't matter. 

It's a philosophical concept that has been abused to the extent of meaningless. 'Do you actually want any of the stuff you are working for? Are you not owned, in truth, by your possessions?'. Pretend, if you can, that that's a fresh new question somehow though. 

Perhaps if I rephrase it that will help. 'Can you quit your job today and go hunting for Nessie with me? No? Is it because of that stupid thing you bought, that you are paying off, that so covertly controls every major life decision you make? Oh, what's that? You have just bought another thing? Why? Oh, it moistens the air well playing Chopin and gently invading your ability to be self reliant to make sure your turbo charged nanny-cam doesn't interrupt your email powered flower arrangements? Well that sounds useful.' 

Apologies if I sound anti-consumerist, I am not, I am saying do you actually want all THAT specific junk you have, and the principle applies to people. Do you actually WANT a husband/wife? Do you WANT kids?

I have a kid, I am really fond of it, and his existence is my favorite part of my life. I don't have a spouse or partner, and that's been working out good for me as well. I SHOULD have gotten married for my kid's sake? Bull. His mother and I are good friends and happier with this. That's an example I guess, the mold didn't fit. We SHOULD have, but we didn't, and everyone involved is better for it.

What mold's don't fit in your life? Stab in the dark that those constitute the majority of what makes you unhappy. The trick lies somewhere in that twenty year old mentality I mentioned, figuring out what makes you the least miserable.

How much time have you spent asking what really makes you happy? I would like to suggest an answer of none at all. Thinking about how it makes you happy to become a person who fits the parameters of social convention whilst allowing you the greatest amount of pleasure, is not thinking about what will make you happy.

What would make me happy? Being lost on an island and finding a group of like minded people to have sex with and never ever shaving again and living in a tree that looks like the one the Lost Boys had. And having a dinosaur. That would make me happy, until I think of a new thing. 

What I used to think would make me happy was studying physics and getting a well paying job and never struggling financially. I feel the contrast makes the point. What would make YOU happy. Not you the earner, you the relative, you the Facebook page, but YOU, the thing that lives somewhere in your skull.

-If the reason you are doing something is pride, stop doing it, no one cares. Nobody, and I repeat, not a soul on earth trust me we had a meeting, gives a crap about your fancy degree, your big house or your social status. If those things really make you happy, then that's great, but odds are they don't, so stop it.

-If it's family, I am going to paraphrase a guy who's name I have forgotten (will post when it comes back to me). 'How much time did you promise your family? a year? a decade? the rest of your life?'. Family is no reason to do anything, I love many of my relatives, but they are humans, and I don't owe them my life, that makes no sense. Stop doing that.

-I am not going to list every reason I can come up with, the point is made.

Some other lessons my twenties have taught me:

-Be honest, not just in what you say, and not for the sake of others, for yourself, as well as to yourself. 

-Don't call yourself anything, like 'intelligent', 'crazy', 'a moonlit wellspring', whatever, you only build yourself a cage with such things. 

-Nobody has it figured out. Even those people who act as though they do. Everyone is secretly a bit terrified, uncertain. No one has the answers. We can determine the mass of particles, calculate the amount of atoms in a perfect sphere of silicon 28 to a precise digit, and map the history of the physical universe to within fractions of a second post its origins. What nobody knows in the slightest is what this actually is and what it, and by extension, what we are here for. No one.

-Learn to step back. All the subject matter of this post, for example, can only be approached when you put some distance between your self and your situation. Those two are, despite our massively flawed and unreliable instincts, not the same thing. 

-Take a holiday. Take a sick day and go sit in the park (or more realistically, walk till you get tired and just sit there). Go insane and get booked into a state mental facility. Whatever it takes. I know I plan on.

Enjoy being alive, and on bad days remember you really are going to die some day. It doesn't really matter, in a positive way.   

Thanks for reading.