Life
So, I decided to write about other aspects of my life that interest me, and funnily enough, life happens to be one of those things.
I'm sat here with an energy drink (a tragic addiction to the things), listening to Motley Crue and Miles Davis, (at different times), putting off revision, and decided to actually write up my ponderings from last night.
I've always had a philosophical mind, the ability to look at many things from different perspectives, putting myself in other people's shoes to understand them better, and the unfortunate ability to hurt myself with my own thoughts. (The over-thinking thing will be used for a later post.) Therefore, I took Philosophy at A Level, at my college. My teacher calls me a born philosopher, and I just smile at her and say: "Thanks, I know."
How I am right at this moment is mainly thanks to my Philosophy class. I built my first friend-group at college with people from it, (as we're all very like-minded) and I joined another friend-group that consisted of many fellow philosophers. I also met my girlfriend in Philosophy. So, for many reasons, I have a natural and acquired love for the subject.
Last night, I happened to be speaking to a few people about life. One wasn't enjoying it (life, not my beautiful words!) and so I was cheering her up, and decided to explain to her my thoughts on life to try and inspire her in some way or another. The other I spoke to is an author of a blog (http://www.aviatex14.co.uk/) that inspired me to create this one. He's a great guy, and surprised me a little. I sit next to him in Philosophy, and his intelligence in the subject made me presume he was a deep thinker, but he told me he was a "Blissfully ignorant being". He enjoys the good things in life and ignores the bad.
I then related this to myself, and wondered in what way I was like this. As you read this, (or maybe after, because you can't read whilst wandering off inside your head, simultaneously!) maybe see how much you relate to this, and then ask yourself if you should be more like it or less like it.
For starters, I pointed out to myself that I hated watching the news on TV. (When I say I pointed it out to myself, I wasn't sat in a suit, with a top hat to match, with a cup of tea, raising my finger to the mirror and stating in a Received Pronunciation accent: "Stay awhile, and listen, good sir!") Why don't I like the news? Sure, you acquire a sense of adulthood as you watch it, nodding along, stroking your small beard, because as a kid, you're brought up thinking the news is boring and therefore for adults. But now I step back and think about it, why do adults even watch it? I asked a few adults, and they say: "Oh, because it's important to know what's going on in the world!"
Is it? Is it really that important?
My problem with news, first of all, is that it's depressing. It's all focused on pain, suffering, war, violence, death and some strange creature called the "Recession." You switch on the TV, all cheerful, full of lovely food, bearing a cup of tea, and oh, the news is on! Within 5 minutes, you've heard about a missing girl, someone found dead abroad, a small Korean threatening to blow the world up, and about job rates decreasing.
Lovely.
So, I bring us back to why it's important to watch the news; "To know what's going on in the world." Why do you need to know about them people dying? Why do you need to know about a possible war? Like, really, need to?
It's not something you can change, there's nothing in your power of knowing this information you can do to stop these things. You might argue that knowing about deaths can make you more aware for self-defence tactics, for self-awareness when walking the streets. But unfortunately, no.
Just no.
It's all common sense! Don't walk down dark alleyways at night, particularly if you're a young woman, wearing a short skirt. Don't go anywhere, in fact, if possible, at night if you're alone. This should be common sense really, and you don't need to know about someone's unfortunate death to learn this. Certainly not anymore. We've seen enough. Watching these things are depressing. I'm not trying to sound like I'm waving off these deaths as though they're insignificant to me. I'm pointing this out because they upset me, because I don't want to see a picture of a young girl who has had her life stolen from her.
Remember me saying how I can put myself into other people's shoes? Sometimes it's not always nice. I imagine being the girl's parents, imagining how sad they must feel, having brought her up, seeing her as a baby, being excited about her birth, watching her go through school, getting grades, revisions, friends, heartbreaks. Then having her taken from them. I imagine being her boyfriend, (not in a sick way,) and how he must feel, having lost someone he loves in the blink of an eye.
I suppose it's in some ways necessary to hear about these things just so you can be grateful for what you have, but for me, it's too depressing. It starts me thinking about those that killed her, and they're the ones who's shoes I cannot put myself in, because I cannot at all begin to comprehend how you could want to kill someone innocent and young; or anyone at all. I try to picture being them, and all I feel is a confused buzz of anger and I can't concentrate: they aren't people at all.
But when someone says, after the death of a celebrity; "Why is it we only hear about someone dying if they were famous? What about the other beautiful people out there?" Yes, many beautiful people die everyday, but if we heard about them all, we'd become so insecure and afraid of our own mortality we'd end up killing ourselves anyway.
As for other news, like the recession, I suppose you may need to know if it affects you, but again, you can't do anything to change how it affects you, so why watch a programme about it, (and therefore endure learning about the deaths and wars) when you could at least Google it?
After this...
I realised that this was the only way I was in some way "blissfully ignorant".
Too many humans are too serious about things that aren't important. I'm sure you are as guilty as I at this. Some little things really get to me and I take them too seriously, maybe get angry or stressed. But then I ask myself; what are the only things I should be serious about, and therefore the rest I shouldn't take seriously and just take with a pinch of salt?
1. College and grades - I don't take college as seriously as I perhaps should, but I take the work as seriously as I can, I stress when I have deadlines, and I work hard to meet them. If I don't take it seriously, I'll get a bad job and possibly be miserable forever. (Though, you don't always need a good job to be happy in life. My aim in life is to be happy in life, but having money is something I'd like to have as well, so as I enjoy getting grades and working towards them, I may as well aim to get the money too while it's still fun to me.)
2. Music - my guitar playing needs to be taken seriously, of course. If I want to get somewhere with it, if I want to become a renowned guitarist, I need to put the work into it to deserve the fun I get from it.
3. My relationship - this is self-explanatory. I don't take my relationship seriously in a boring sense, as though I'm stern and strict with my wench. I mean seriously as in not being lazy, as in continuing to make the effort.
4. My family and friends - With friends, I suppose I'm a bit of a sinner. I don't make as much effort as I maybe ought to with them. I just simply don't have time for everything unfortunately. However, I still offer my support whenever they need it, and I take their opinions and feelings seriously. And as for family, again, life seems to be on top of me, I seem to not have much time with them as of late due to college, work, revision, music and my girlfriend. But then I realise that this is just growing up. But again, I try to take them seriously and what they want for me.
This means that I should take everything else less seriously. I didn't include myself on that list. I don't take myself seriously. I act how I want to feel, or I act how I want to be seen by others, and I enjoy being able to switch between how I act whenever I want. In front of my friends, I act crazy and energetic. In front my girlfriend's parents I am calm, knowledgeable, fairly witty but very polite. But I don't take myself seriously. I don't particularly care about myself. It doesn't mean I don't enjoy life, in fact, I love it. It just means that I think life is short, and I should do what I feel like doing, as long as it doesn't hurt anyone else.
I know I may seem naive. There are loopholes in my reasoning. For example, to take a relationship seriously, it means I need to keep my job of which I find boring to be able to afford to take her out and treat her to a meal and so forth. Sure, we don't need to go out particularly to be in love, but again, I like to show effort and enjoy my time with her, and this does require money a lot of the time. But, as for what I mean overall, I don't mean to sound naive, but it just shows blissful ignorance of which I spoke of.
I'd rather at least believe there is a way to live life to the full, even if it's a little unrealistic; and at least aim for some of these ways in which to live, if not all of them.
This morning, on my bus, a car pulled out wrongly, causing the bus to stop, and other cars to stop. Everyone I could see appeared to be swearing at him and being ridiculously angry. Even I gave the car a harsh look as we drove past. But then I thought to myself; "Okay, he made a mistake. It could've been dangerous, potentially, but no one was hurt." Then I went on to thinking that everyone will have forgotten about that incident within 13 seconds of it happening, except the driver himself. All that anger aimed at this driver, when all the incident really did was add about 10 seconds onto everyone's journey. I realised then that I fell victim to taking something too seriously again. Yes, I only gave a funny look, but it was the unnecessary anger I developed that I am focusing on. In an ideal world, whenever someone makes a mistake, everyone would smile, wave their hands to say: "Don't worry about it!" And get on with life. But unfortunately, we're far from that. I think we all need to become like that, or at least look back on it afterwards as I have, and aspire to change to become a more pleasant person.
So ask yourself, how seriously do you take things that aren't actually important at all? What 4-5 things would you say you need to be serious about, leaving everything else non-serious?
The Ball Analogy
So, as I cheered this girl up, I used an analogy to explain how we can live our lives.
I explained that I thought life was pointless. However, I explained that this shouldn't be a depressing thing at all. Just because we're little beings on a giant floating rock in a huge, unimaginable amount of dark space that bear no importance to anything except our own built society, doesn't mean we should be sad about it. We should embrace this, and realise that we are small, and that our time here is short, and therefore that we should try and enjoy it as best as we can. Some of us, like me, aim to be big, to be important amongst our race. Others are perfectly content with being small and to themselves. Whatever it is you want from this life, aim for it, or appreciate it if you are fortunate enough to already have it.
There are 3 types of people in this world, I think. I describe this with a homemade analogy; the ball analogy.
You are walking down a long, straight street, and you find a ball at your feet. (This sounds like the start of a song. All that rhyming going on. Mental.)
Person One: Picks up the ball, looks at it, but sees that it is a bit tattered and so rips it up on his journey, pulling at it, tearing it to pieces like a dog, until there's nothing but scraps left.
Person Two: Picks up the ball, looks at it, but then ignores it, just holding the ball in his hand, walking down the road until he reaches the end.
Person Three: Picks up the ball, looks at it, and smiles at the opportunity. He walks down the road, throwing it in the air, catching it, with the slight danger of dropping it, and even occasionally actually dropping it, but picking it back up and enjoying what he has found.
(Person Four: isn't a person. They're the accidents, the abortions, the one night stands. They ignore the ball and therefore don't have any relevance in the analogy.)
I think it's already self explanatory, but person one is the sort of person that disregards his life completely, not caring about it or anything around him. The word "chav" casually springs to mind, but there are others who fall victim to this way of life. Those who just had a bad upbringing, those who are just depressed, and those who tragically enjoy being self-destructive. (Self-destruction will be a later post on this blog. I have a lot to say on that matter.)
Person Two accepts his life, but that's all. The person rarely enjoys it, he's afraid to throw the ball in the air in case he drops it. This person knows that all highs have their lows, and would rather not have the high because he's too afraid of feeling the low. This person, in my imagination, is your average guy, trapped in the rat race of life. 9-5 job, decent pay, that's all. The pay is used on sustenance, maybe the odd one or two pleasantries, but nothing that makes him extremely happy. He may even have a girlfriend, but she's exactly the same, and they rarely see each other because they convince themselves they're working towards something, rather than accepting they already have something, but are wasting it in the false hope that there's something better in the future. They hate their jobs too.
Just reading that sounds depressing, but it's not a dead end. Sure it's a risk, but if you hate your job and it stops you doing/seeing the thing you love, e.g your girlfriend, then you need to at least consider searching for a new job.
Person Three loves life. They accept there can be lows as a result of highs, and therefore appreciate the high moments even more, and grow from the low moments in the comfort that another high moment is likely in another few more steps. This person could be jobless and alone, or this person could be rich and in love. What's mutual is that the person really lives his life, appreciates what he has, takes and enjoys what he's earned and gives to and helps others to aid them in experiencing what he's experiencing.
Living life is doing what you enjoy as often as possible. You must have some sort of plan to keep it in order, I personally believe; otherwise you may find the ball rolling across the floor for too long until it reaches the end of the street. Whether it's drinking, smoking, playing, making music, making love, making money, helping others or giving to others that you enjoy, as long as it doesn't hurt others, and as long as it does indeed make you happy, do it. (It's probably best to have more than one thing you love doing, because if it's just drinking, you'll become an alcoholic that could hurt others.)
Try new things, meet new people. Bored of your job after working there for too long? Get a new one. Don't trap yourself in the same environment for too long. If there's a way out, take it. (Leaving school after 5 years instead of staying on for two more years was the best decision I ever made. New environment, new people, new teachers; a great way to start fresh, and to keep your mind refreshed.) You've less than about 80 years to live on this planet. There are 100s of countries, cities and billions of people to explore. Why confine yourself to so little, and still say you live your life, (despite complaining about it)?
You don't even know what life is. Nor do I, I understand this, but I am at least aware; I am just young and unable to live my life fully just yet. (However, if you thoroughly enjoy the life you do lead, then you are living, of course, just not fully.)
Don't complain about life being boring if you refuse to do anything about it, if you refuse to actually find life. Get off your ass and find something, someone, somewhere to make your life worth living.
To Conclude
Life is short, too short. If it's endlessly boring, change it. Make it worth living. Go somewhere, be spontaneous. Life is pointless, but it's even more pointless if you refuse to live it.
My favourite quote, (altered by me to suit me better), "Make yourself visible, no matter what, and free others from pain and suffering." (The original was "free from guilt", and was by Jim Carrey, my God.) Like the Buddha teaches, enjoy life, and help others to as well.
And I leave you now with:
A "funny" little story
My English teacher from secondary school once said, (I paraphrase as I can't exactly remember, but it was along the lines of):
"The person in this book knows how to live. He's off to do something with his life and enjoying it! You're all sat here like slaves, copying notes into your books, in your uniforms, all looking miserable!"
I said:
"So you're saying that if I stood up now and left, saying I was off to enjoy and live my life, you wouldn't stop me?"
And he replied: "No, but I know you wouldn't be off to actually enjoy and live your life. You'd go straight home and sit on your Xbox or something."
He had a good point.
Thanks for reading! Feedback is appreciated, find me on Facebook or follow me on Twitter @ARKWalton
Adam 'ARK' Walton.
