Day 254 - Refocus

June 16, 2011

Inspired by recent readings, I decided to take a drive tonight.

Here's what I saw:

Reading that prompted this trip:

Five Reasons Life Actually Does Get Better

by John Cheese at Cracked.com (but it's still really good)

I know it seems silly, but this piece is poignant and insightful.  

You owe it to yourself to read it.

In the last year you've probably heard "It gets better" used as a motto to encourage gay teens who've been the victims of bullying. This is not a rebuttal of that, because I am not an asshole. What I do want to do is expand that message to everyone that age, whether you have a bully problem or not.

I figure it's time, as I tend to write about dark and often brutally depressing subjects, like how I was a smoldering drunk for over half of my life and how much my parents sucked at being parents. But I do it for a reason. I figure there are a lot of people in the same situation who feel like they're alone. That's always the worst part about having a shitty life in your teens or 20s, feeling like everyone else in the world has it figured out but you.

So, as a man with a truly shitty past, let me say that it's not just a slogan. It does get better.

And just to make sure you didn't skip over the "it's not easy" part: If you think "it gets better" means you can sit back and wait for a naked genie to fart cash into your living room, it will not. "It gets better" doesn't mean life lets up, it means you no longer have to submit to it. Not like when you're a kid, when your parents can divorce without your consent or make you change schools or make you get a stupid haircut. When you're an adult, you can get pissed and swing back.

From Patton Oswalt: 

First off:  Reputation, Posterity and Cool are traps.   They’ll drain the life from your life.   Reputation, Posterity and Cool = Fear.

Let me put that another way.   Bob Hope once said, “When I was twenty, I worried what everything thought of me.    When I turned forty, I didn’t care what anyone thought of me.   And then I made it to sixty, and I realized no one was ever thinking of me.”    And then he pooed his pants, but that didn’t make what he said any less profound.

Secondly:   The path is made by walking.    And when you’re walking that path, you choose how things affect you.  You always have that freedom, no matter how much your liberty it curtailed.   You…get to choose…how things affect you.

And lastly, and I guarantee this.   It’s the one thing I know ‘cause I’ve experienced it:

There Is No Them.