A Large Collection of horse-shit and rubbish:
Otherwise known as making excuses for not doing what you want
Dear reader,
I was sitting on a shaded patio, smoking cigarettes and drinking coffee, when I found myself bombarded with a series of messages and emails today. This isn't terribly unusual or even all that strange, as I openly welcome people to seek me out when they're truly stumped or fucked, but it was the commonality of questions and themes that struck me. Everyone seemed to be surrounded by circumstances which they felt genuinely kept them from being able to properly 'enjoy' the life they had around them and it ran the gambit in terms of tone.
Some people were having relationship problems, others were having money issues, and some people just felt they were in a place they did not belong. This is just a broad glimpse of what I saw and what was brought to my attention, and I think they're arguably the more relatable positions. We've all been there or at least somewhere similar, at some point in our lives. We've all stared down the barrel of that gun and felt inexplicably helpless to make any kind of real change.
Then, when presented with a laundry list of suggestions, ideas, thoughts, and so on, I started to hear one word become strangely overpowering. It was the word ‘too’. This word started be placed in front of nearly every reason why something someone wanted, simply could not be – which was highlighted by the fact that, less than twenty four hours ago, I’d had a very similar conversation about that word with a very close friend and confidant of mine.
Now, I’m not going to be an asshole here and say that every reason given was entirely invalid or just some whored up excuse for not doing something, some people had legitimate reasons for not being able to do things right now. For some people it was a sense of being logistically unable to pursue what it was they wanted, they didn’t have enough money right now, it was too far away right now, or that right now it was just too complicated and they had other things they needed to focus on.
These things made sense and I wasn’t about to say “Fuck off and quit whining.” Instead we built plans, shared ideas and got some thoughts about how to make it work for the future. This seemed acceptable and the problem was decidedly ‘worked on’, and life resumed as normal, but, by no measure, was this the bulk of the presented process. In fact, despair and a long stream of bullshit seemed to be the norm.
It was like everyone around me had suddenly descended into the notion that life, in all its glory and fucked up wisdom, was just too goddamned hard. It was too tough, or too scary, or too much struggle– and, too me, that was all just too much horse-shit. What follows is a harsh and unforgiving opinion on the matter, as well as a relative perspective that might be worthwhile to adopt.
Is life hard? Yes, absolutely. It’s wild, feral, unforgiving, and it will not stop unless you want to get drastic and plan your own exit. Some people opt for this choice, for reasons that I cannot currently begin to fathom, but this isn’t for those people. Those people have, at the very least, made a straight forward plan of action and followed it through to a final fruition. While I might not condone that choice, while it might not be one I’d make, it’s one that is at least taking control of the situation. Is draining all the life from your body the only way? Fuck no. This is for the people who don’t want to exit stage left, but rather just want to find a new stage.
First things first, if all of your rationale boils down to a stream of excuses then, and I’ll say this quite frankly, it’s your own damn fault. If your only reason for not being in a relationship is that meeting people frightens you? Fucking work on it. The world is full of people, and if you’re discontent with the notion of being goddamned algae, sitting around stagnating in your own filth and muck, then don’t. Get off your ass and force yourself to meet new people and stop trying to justify not doing it, because the only person you’re ever really going to convince is you. Again, it’s your own fault.
Evolution – or ‘God’ if that’s more your cup of tea – has gifted you with countless means by which you can make the most out of your life. You’ve been given hands, words, teeth, tongue, claws, and, my personal favorite, imagination. These are all things that, with actual effort, can provide you with all the roads and answers you’ll ever need, you just can’t expect it to magically happen with no effort from you.
The world is full of tools – and there’s more meaning there if you opt to read into it – but the thing about tools is that, for them to do anything, you have to actually use them. You’re a human being; you’ve evolved to use tools to make your life easier, smoother, and readily available to be lived. However, if all you’re going to do is sit there and stare at a pile of tools, expecting them do something without any work from you, then you’re going to end up with exactly what you deserve – nothing will change, and you’ll still be surrounded by tools.
You are the one sitting there, piling on shovels full of shit and excuses as to why you can’t do something until it looks like a goddamned mountain you will have to climb – which then of course means it’s a fucking mountain you have to climb and you have one more reason to not do it. You know what? That’s rubbish. You’re raping your own desires and ambitions because you’ve swallowed down sour experiences and just can’t be bothered to look for the sunshine and sweet treats any more.
It’s as if the majority of the world has simply decided to go ahead and be gluttonous, fat, Romans. You want sit around and refuse to eat unless someone is hand feeding them while two others fuck for your amusement and finish each other off with swords. You want the world on a silver platter like that, there’s only one way you’re going to get it: Go mine the goddamned silver, smelt it, forge it into a plate, build the world you want, and then serve it to yourself. That is the only way it will ever work.
If you’re dating a shitty boyfriend who doesn’t make you happy, then work to change it. If you’re not happy with where you’re living, then work to change it. If you’re not happy with what you’re doing with yourself, then, you guessed it, work to change it. You have to use your hands, use your mind, use your words, use your imagination, and use whatever you’ve got on hand to get to where you want to be, but stop using everything in front of you as a reason to do nothing.
If you’re not willing to do these things for yourself, if you’re not willing to invest the time to get your world to where you want it to be? That’s fine. That’s your choice, but with that choice you’ve revoked your own right to really complain about it. To put it in another light, it would be much akin to someone who wanted steak, who went out to eat at a place that had steak for sale, and ordered chicken – and then spent the rest of the meal bitching they didn’t have the steak they wanted.
If you want steak, then you’d better fucking order the steak. If you want to be happy, then you’d better fucking be willing to work for it and not just sit where you are for whatever cacophonous pile of horse-shit reasoning you’re selling yourself. The only person in the entire world who can keep you from the genuine pursuit of your wants is you, and if you simply refuse to invest the time in you, toward working what you want, then don’t expect the world to just hand it over to you.
The world is yours for the making, yours for the building, yours to frame and see. Being happy with where you are, what you do, and where your life is going is all a simple matter of working at it. So, the next time you opt to sit down and come up with a laundry list of reasons, all of which smell like shit, for why you shouldn’t do something, consider this a strong suggestion to look at how you’re investing your time.
It’s really damned easy to sit down and see what you don’t want. It’s all too easy to sit down and abuse the hell out of the word ‘too’, to apply it to all the reasons you can then use to justify simply doing nothing. You can look at that monstrous pile of, self-invented, bullshit and then just decide to give up the idea of trying to climb over it altogether. It’s really damned easy to do all those things, and I’m sure that’s a large part of the appeal, but think about this instead.
The next time you sit down to look at everything that’s wrong, and everything you can think of that says you shouldn’t do this, or that, whatever it is, here’s my advice: Don’t. Stop wasting time thinking of ways in which you are limited, unable, unqualified, whatever, just stop. Instead, take all that time you would have spent trying to get neck deep in bullshit, and turn it around.
Think about all the things you can do, think about ways to change what makes you unhappy in your life, think about what it is you want and how the fuck it is you’re going to get there. When you come across those things, and everyone has them, that you simply cannot change, then you have only one thing you can really do. You’ve got to find a way to own it, to adapt to it, to carry on in spite of it. If you’re really unwilling to do that?
Well, you’ve cashed your check already then and really can’t complain you’re not getting the full value out of life.
Sincerely yours, with no apologies,
The resident Gimp.
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