After having a rough couple week it was defiantly time to relax and live a little...
and on that saturday night in my drunken shell. I had one of the most honest conversations of my life. And from that moment sparked a line of thought that would have otherwise gone unnoticed.
Feeling sick of monotony....
http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/dead
Definition 11 and 12 of dead i find particularly interesting... because as of late i have felt that lack of enthusiasm for chasing the 9-5 and climbing the corporate ladder.
The typical American lifeline seems to flow as follows.
Birth
Primary Education
Secondary Education
Work
Reproduction
Death
Now granted there are a few more intricate steps than that, lets breakdown these few.
You are born into this world perfect unscathed... your parents have the grandest of dreams, fears and hope for your future.
Primary education, is one of the most interesting fazes of life for many it is there fist exposure to other humans, other people like ourselves. At this faze we learn about things like peer pressure, acceptability, manners, and in general how the people around us can effect our lives as we affect theirs. I think one of the greatest examples would be the first kiss or the first love... how we connect with these people through words and interactions how our facial expression can sometimes say more than our phrases.
Secondary Education is the greatest hoax to hit planet earth... From my observation of my college grad friends, and from the two years i spent in school.
I have noticed College cost thousands of dollars, forces you live in the poorest conditions, doesn't guarantee you a job of any kind, and is a day late and a dollar short on specialized training. If instead of taking four years to sit through math, spanish, and a ton of other classes that have nothing to do with my major cut to the chase and tech me what i came here to learn.
As a psychology major why should i have to sit through trigonometry? Of what use is trig?
And at the end of it all after the money is spent, and through the sleepless nights i'm not guaranteed to get a job to support myself or at least one the field i was interested in when i began this journey. All in all you're betting your future on the whims of other men.
After the years of partying and other wasted efforts begins the real work. And life moves from a waste of time to a serious of injustice.
The corporate beast has been birthed. Now comes the phase of life where in general and on mass scale your dreams of youth are met with their end... the 9-5. As now most of your time will be consumed with making money for the grand scheme of survival.
But many fail to realize the difference between making a living and making a life...
in short, of what benefit is it to to spend unyielding hours in an office, or on a construction site or behind a desk... what benefit is to be had?
Some will say money but the truth is the company pays you what they think you should have as opposed to how much you're really worth. For instance on my job I've sold numerous shows totaling hundreds of thousands yet I only make several thousand per year.
Being a "productive citizen." I don't know about you but the last time my job did anything good for planet earth or the human collective... wait, it never has. The entire focus of many companies is to get money. and many do this by defying the age old adage "you don't get something for nothing."
Also the lessons learned in youth are put into practice here. the peer pressure from childhood, the mismanagement of time, the shifted focus. They're all here in this phase... on this leg of the journey. But the death of sorts is the birth of the next phase the reproduction and reconstruction phase. Not all but many people choose to reproduce and only the wise try to make life for their offspring better than the one they were placed into.
But this too can be a dangerous battle ground... bleeding into the excess. and generating a life of self.
Having a child can shift your focus from a "what about me" to "they are my everything." And for such a dramatic shift the danger of forgetting those around us is ever present. You see the problem is not with motivation but with mindset... western civilization has such a vast capacity for personal autonomy.
I'm not saying adopt a herd mentality, I'm saying we need to strive to build community. Need to connect with those of like mind to protect the good of all (not just the few, or the many, but all).
I believe this an attainable goal one which will take more work, time and patience than we as a western civilization are accustom to... but that is a conversation for another time.
