There's an old line that none of this matters if you're unhappy. So you you go down the list of things you should want - money, house, wife, kids, fast car, cocaine, star trek collector's plates, fame - and then you strike out on the path that society has laid out to get these things. You have that conversation with Tyler Durden's dad. Then, maybe you get there and it's not so great. Or maybe you fucked up 22 times and never got there at all. Maybe you're wallowing in self-indulgence at the colossal failure that your life has amounted to. Or maybe you lucked into getting everything exactly right, hit that goddamn nail right on the head. Then you get to be a leader of society. Then you get to tell everyone how you got there. Then people try to copy it. I'm not going to go off on a rant about the butterfly effect, but what works for the rooster won't work for the gander. There is not checklist, no template, no six-lane expressway to personal fulfillment. I read once that it's very difficult within the human condition to be happy unless you are flourishing. But here's the joker - you don't need to pull down six figures or marry the prom queen to flourish. All you need to do is honor yourself. How I got so deep into the mire without hearing of this is beyond me, although I suspect that it flies in the face of capitalism and the American Dream. You have to fight those things bereft of existential angst, those things that are to thine own self. No one can predict what they are and no one has the right to deem yours any less worthy than another. Chances are that you already know what these things are. They're unfolding for me as I write. There are a select few reasons not to do them, but most of us are not burdened with such weights. So go do them. Now. There will always be a thousand reasons to avoid them, scores of faces that still don't get it. Pay them no minds. This is not about instant gratification, not about base desires. Rather this about being human in it's fullest sense. If you don't do that, then you're not really alive. So I'm going to keep on talking, even if no one is listening. Strangely I'm no longer looking for any recognition, not struggling to solve the equation, find the answer. This isn't the meaning of life, but if you're unhappy I would give it a whirl. I don't have the discipline to paint a self-portrait, but I would love to sketch it for you, one streak of graphite at a time.
Ah, hell, I'm gonna play you some Justin Bieber for you cuz I have the fever. No, not really. I'll let Ed and John take us out. Cheers.
