One of the Worst Things Your Parents Said

One of the worst things they'll say to you when you're young is that getting older sucks, that adulthood is  not nearly as fun as childhood, that life is at its best when you are young. What a damning pontification. What, then, if the child is currently not enjoying life? You have condemned them to an even worse future. You have trivialized their current suffering. And what does that say to a 10 year old? That the next 70 years of their life, now, are all downhill? A slowly increasing haphazard of suffering and misery?

To a 10 year old who doesn't understand concepts like nostalgia and rose-tinted glasses, it seems true. Why would your parents lie? Why would they be wrong?

For some, they will be right, for others, they won't. To wit, the present author could never go back to junior high, or high school, long ago grown out of the cynical hardening and verbal jousting they required. The present author could never go back to a time when they couldn't choose what and when to eat, what to wear, when to travel. These are all immensely freeing and valuable occurrences.

So if any of you ever have children, all I ask is that, instead of trying to explain to a child how they have it so good, simply work to make it so, and give them reasons to embrace life, at any age.

Time Flies By

If one makes it to age 85, one finds that they will have spent around 80 years of their life hearing how fast time flies by, how quickly a year went, and how it all seems over so soon. One would think that, given this pernicious and constant reminder, many people would spend their lives in less futile and repetitive situations. Alas, not only is such change impossible, it is irrelevant, as the perceived speed of one's lifespan does nothing to alleviate the fundamental nature of suffering and failure.

10000 Hours

Given the myth that a certain amount of time spent doing something allows one to achieve mastery of said thing, and given previous posts detailing the relatively small effect practice actually has on the quality of something, one might be inclined to suggest that this blog is, coincidentally, a pertinent example of time and familiarity (being that the present author is now two years into it) of both practice and repetition doing nothing to improve one's quality.

Body

Some have said that your body is a "temple." Some have said that your body is "a Bible." Still others have said that your body is a "wonderland." All these things suggest a sort of holy and metaphysical euphoria. Given, however, that the average human spends 3/4s of their life with their body slowly breaking down, and given that physical peaks are limited such as that one can only enjoy them for a few years, and given that the entire world seems apt to force us to put the most unhealthy, god-forsaken food into said body, one must wonder how said temple, or Bible, or wonderland, manages to even still exist in anything but a constant vegetative state.

Beautiful Day

While a sunny day may improve the mood of one who suffers from Seasonal Affective Disorder, or even just anyone in general, it is also an apt metaphor of the futility of existence. While one might be inclined to create all sorts of planned outdoor activities for a nice day, one frequently finds that, ultimately, all plans go awry, and the scheduled outdoors time is instead replaced with meaningless time staring at a screen, into the void. Given that this represents the folly of existence, one might be inclined to suggest that nice days are, infact, the worst, as they most accurately portray meaninglessness and ennui.

Consuming More

It's been said that, in order to get better at something, one must spend time doing said thing, and consuming works or jobs in said area. For instance, if one wanted to be a writer, one would be apt to spend copious amounts of time both writing and reading, the latter to learn what does and doesn't work, and to continue to evolve one's vocabulary and familiarity with successfully published works. Given, however, that the more one reads, the more one limits their ability to write something that they haven't read before, one might be inclined to suggest that while, in this case, reading is good for increasing one's knowledge of the written word, it is also good for reducing any hope of creativity or new ideas to zero.