I’m going to go ahead and warn you, this post may be lengthy and I am quite tired, so it might not make sense. While I’m at it, I also apologize for the huge gap in time since my last post. I have my reasons, I promise.
Right before my birthday this year I told my best friend that I’d always known that this was going to be my year, not the actual year 2008, but this year of my life. Since my birthday falls close to the middle of the year, I should say that the last half of 2008 and the first half of 2009 were written in the stars as a fantastic period of time for me. I don’t recall when I began believing that this age was going to be something spectacular, but it was quite some time ago, I’d venture to say beginning to mid-high school.
If you look at this year for me, written down, it doesn’t look that fantastic. I lost a relative the month before my birthday, had surgery less than two weeks after my birthday, caught pneumonia from the surgery, and two months after my birthday I was in an accident that has resulted in a quit job and quite possibly, permanent damage to my body.
But, I digress. If I could wrap up the last seven months into a sentence it would be, “Take your lessons where you can find them and learn.”
My generation as a whole, tends to leave a bad taste in older generations mouths. Why? Well, we’re considered, disrespectful, lazy, and unmotivated. Seriously. And while I can see where this prognosis would come from, I do not consider myself to contain any of the aforementioned attributes for more than a week or so at a time. We all have our off weeks, it happens.
I think the actual problem with my generation is a lack of understanding, on our part. Many of us do not take the time to stop and not only figure out what we can about ourselves, but figure out the world around us. I do not mean globally, but rather our jobs, teachers, parents. Many of us go along with our day to day, doing as we please and never stopping to think about any of it at all, as if the surface you see is all that’s there. But, we’ve somehow become bleeding hearts as well, but that’s for another day.
The lessons/things I’ve managed to learn about myself in the past months are ones I hope that my peers will come to learn about themselves sooner rather than later, (this of course does not apply to all peers, as some of the ones I know are already way ahead of me in this game).
I feel like this post isn’t going anywhere, but I promise it is, however I do believe it’s a bit scattered.
The things we can gather from the people close to us are unreal.
Okay, I’m getting at this, Perspective. Yes, perspective. We all lack it sometimes, but I think having a good perspective on things is key.
For instance, we worry constantly. We’re a worrying society. If you want to know what you should really be worried about, ask a child. Love, companionship, intelligence - those are the things I was told, only in different wording. Now, I’m not being all mushy, I know, we have bills, we have/need/want jobs and education, but at the end of the day, if you lost your house, car, job, and savings, but you know you would still have somewhere to lay your head at night under a roof - is it really that bad? Perhaps it’s not ideal, perhaps it bruises your pride a little and you are forced to deal with things you thought you’d escaped (if you’re moving back in with your parents, it’s okay, we’ve all done it), but it can be as temporary as you need it to be. If you can lost everything you own and still have a home to go to where someone will welcome you with open arms, is any of it really that bad? Perspective.
Of course, then there is the inevitable argument of losing one’s independence. Well, I can tell you first hand, independence is what you make of it. Living with someone else (a couple, a stranger, or parents, perhaps) does not rob you of your independence, it merely makes you find more creative ways of expressing it. No, you might not be able to get drunk off wine with a handful of friends while watching bad TV and yelling like commentators, however, you can still come and go, you can still get drunk off wine while watching bad TV, but maybe with just one or two friends while knocking your yelling down to quitter snide comments. Compromise.
I believe it takes a strong person to compromise and to find a positive way of looking at ugly situations. No one would ever readily admit they consider themselves weak. If you were to ask anyone, “Are you a strong person?” I’d wager they’d all say, ‘yes.’ However, if you were to follow it up with ‘why?’ I doubt they’d all have answers. I think part of knowing yourself, is being able to answer the ‘why’s?’
If you aren’t sure of your strength, I think the easiest thing for most of us to do is look around us. While it absolutely isn’t applicable to everyone, many of us can look at the people who raised us, then at the other people we hold near and dear to our hearts.
When you get old or mature enough to look at the people who have raised you with respect and gratitude, but without hostility, then you can see them as people rather than parents or guardians. I believe we have a decent amount of strength ingrained in us from those who raise us. If you hear the stories or watch them experience things, the pride instilled in you, in my opinion can be used as strength. This of course is aside from things that you have been through personally.
If you consider the people you keep closest to you to be strong people, then chances are you will be one too, because strong people rarely like to keep weaker ones around. We all want to be able to fall back on those close to us during a crisis and falling back on a weaker person than yourself is not a possibility.
You want an outlook on life? Talk to someone who knows they’re dying soon and isn’t afraid. It won’t necessarily be the things they say to you, as opposed to the feeling you get from them. Death is an inevitability, so I’d rather live like I was dying - no need to sugar coat it.
You want to feel important? Go through your phone or address book and count the number of people who love you. Even if you come up with just one - you’re pretty fucking important.
I suddenly feel like I’m writing a self-help book. I’m not, I’m just pointing out my perspective on things. I’m very lucky, because I’ve become extremely settled in my spiritual beliefs, and to some people those things don’t matter and that’s great for them, it’s one less thing to worry about, but for me it’s brought an odd sense of calm. That was just a random tidbit for ya.
I don’t have it all figured out by a long shot. I swear, i’m not being boastful in this post, boastful people actually annoy me quite a bit. There are things that I haven’t experienced that everyone else I know has, things that will undoubtedly teach me way more about myself.
Alright, this has gotten way longer than intended, it’s scattered, slightly preachy, and I totally didn’t even hit on some of the things I meant to. I told you I was tired.
Nonetheless, to my small non-biological family I’ve made of my close friends, I love you guys and I couldn’t ask for a better group of people to go through life with.
“What would you attempt if you knew you could not fail?”
-N
