This is your life. When are you going to start living it?

For the next five minutes, I want you to pull your head out of your ass, take a good hard look at yourself and pay attention. It’s not like you really have anything better to do anyway.

Correct me if I’m wrong. You’re somewhere in your twenties. You’re either working an unfulfilling dead-end job or studying in order to be able to get one. You can’t really say you’re fiscally independent (and think twice before you disagree; being neck-deep in student debt and fighting an uphill battle to make ends meet can hardly be called “independent”). Your elders are condescendingly caring at best, outright critical at worst. They probably say you’re privileged, spoiled -that you have it so much easier than they did and yet you do precious little- that you’re, in essence, a disgrace.

The worst part is that, somewhere deep inside, you fear they may be right.

And so you live in stress and doubt and angst. You spend your days trying to prove something to someone, never really stopping to wonder why, too busy to realize who you are and what you want.

Too busy to realize that your days are, quite literally, numbered.

Fuck, mate.

Enough with the goddamn pretense of civility; I’ll be raw. How many good years do you think there are left in you before your body and your brain start missing beats?

Before decline kicks in?

Before flaccid cocks and saggy tits, screaming kids, high cholesterol, prostate exams, menopause?

Before heart attacks and strokes, meds, dentures, Alzheimer’s, Parkinson’s, cancer?

Before kicking the bucket, shitting the bed, pushing daisies – you know, dying?

For all you know, chum, you could cross the street tomorrow morning and get hit by a garbage truck. And as you lie broken on the asphalt, tasting your own blood and bile and shit, you’ll realize you spent your whole life trying to be someone you didn’t even want to be. But then it’s gonna be too late to do anything about it.

So, what do you want to be? Let me tell you. (Come on, you’ve already let so many people do that; one more won’t make a difference, right?)

Elementary, my dear fuckstick – you want to be happy.

The problem is that you’re taught how by people who aren’t happy themselves. That’s idiotic. Yeah, okay, experience does have value, yadda yadda, but come on. It’s like blindly following your underachiever literature teachers’ advice and aspire to be a great writer – if they knew how, chum, wouldn’t they be best-seller authors themselves? What’s worse is that you’re actually expected to follow that highway to mediocrity and never dare to stray from it, lest you be branded a failure and blackballed.

Better to be on the safe side, right? Be a good kid, study, get into college. Get a loan, study, get your degree. Get a job, get a mortgage, get married, have children. Pop some antidepressants. Be a good citizen. Work 40+ hours a week for 40+ years; then get a pension less than 40% of what you had been earning. But hey, don’t let all that get you down! The rest of your life is yours to do as you see fit! I hear that home for the elderly down the road throws some sick parties!

What you need is some perspective. Empty your precious schedule, grab a beer or a glass of wine and watch, say, Pink Floyd’s ‘The Wall’ (which is NOT drug-addled ‘70’s prog rock nonsense). Or ‘Fight Club’ (which is NOT an ode to macho manliness, anarchy and violence). Or ‘Amelie’ (which is totally NOT a lukewarm chick flick).

Now, now, don’t get me wrong. There IS merit in a conventional lifestyle, nobody can deny that. As I said, it’s safe. It’s what common sense dictates. But common sense is for common people – have you met many truly happy common people?

Heh.

Didn’t think so.