My OperaDetached From Reality :: No Worries, No Happiness
Sunday, December 30, 2007 2:47:56 AM
So many people are afraid of really living life. They're afraid of the little challenges that give their lives meaning. I don't mean to say that life should be an uphill struggle, but life would be boring if there weren't little curves and bumps in the road. Despite this, so many people want to spend money paving over the smallest cracks in the asphalt or digging up and rerouting the road to straighten it out. They believe that life is so much better when everything is predictable. When you can predict everything that happens, is life really worth it anymore?
Take celebrities for example. Not long ago, a member of one of my favorite bands, Boston, committed suicide. He was an unbelievably good vocalist, able to exactly replicate his voice time and time again. He had to have had it made, right? Afterall, you can't be that good and not have cash, and we all know cash buys happiness. All this, yet he felt that life was not worth living. His fire died, which appears to be a common trend. I don't know what he was thinking, but perhaps life just got dull.
My grandfather said something similar about himself about two years ago. He said that when he's done with work and he's retired, he's not sure that life would be as great as it was working. Life is boring when you have nothing to do. When you're not working, what purpose do you have in this world? It's the sense of purpose that drives us to do the great things we've done. We build the tallest buildings, we make the fastest vehicles, we develop the most robust technology, and we even put ourselves on other worlds - not because we "just want to" - but because of the challenge it poses and because, when it's all said and done, we know we've accomplished something grand. Making ourselves proud comes second to making the next generations proud. It feels great to know you're appreciated.
But despite the high to the ego that this offers, people hate risk and wallow in living bland, mediocre, mundane lives. People don't want their kids to ride a bike without using training wheels because they'll fall and scrape their hands and knees. When I was a small child it took me a while to get the hang of riding a bike and I was daunted when the training wheels were removed. The first time I tried it without them, I fell over within a couple feet and scraped my hands and knees.
For some of us, those scrapes would be a motivator not to fall over again and they would instigate us into trying again to overcome the challenge. We don't settle for not being able to do something. For others, the scrapes aren't worth the risk so they stick with training wheels, no matter how pointless it makes it to ride a bike. The training wheels are all they have and they live their lives dependent on others when the training wheels come off, all the while the rest of us are riding by them without training wheels, some of us even able to turn tricks that otherwise could not be done with training wheels still attached.
No matter how happy you say you are by living a life without risks, deep down you know you're lying to the world and yourself. You envy those bike riders turning the tricks, not just because they can do those tricks, but because they look like they're on top of the world while they do it. You want so much to be in the top rank that instead of raising yourself to those standards, you lower the standards so that you fit in, saying it's not fair that they're better at riding a bike than you are. You stifle those doing tricks by restricting them to training wheels again under the guise of providing them safety. You're happier knowing that everyone else is just as unhappy and disappointed as you.
Take celebrities for example. Not long ago, a member of one of my favorite bands, Boston, committed suicide. He was an unbelievably good vocalist, able to exactly replicate his voice time and time again. He had to have had it made, right? Afterall, you can't be that good and not have cash, and we all know cash buys happiness. All this, yet he felt that life was not worth living. His fire died, which appears to be a common trend. I don't know what he was thinking, but perhaps life just got dull.
My grandfather said something similar about himself about two years ago. He said that when he's done with work and he's retired, he's not sure that life would be as great as it was working. Life is boring when you have nothing to do. When you're not working, what purpose do you have in this world? It's the sense of purpose that drives us to do the great things we've done. We build the tallest buildings, we make the fastest vehicles, we develop the most robust technology, and we even put ourselves on other worlds - not because we "just want to" - but because of the challenge it poses and because, when it's all said and done, we know we've accomplished something grand. Making ourselves proud comes second to making the next generations proud. It feels great to know you're appreciated.
But despite the high to the ego that this offers, people hate risk and wallow in living bland, mediocre, mundane lives. People don't want their kids to ride a bike without using training wheels because they'll fall and scrape their hands and knees. When I was a small child it took me a while to get the hang of riding a bike and I was daunted when the training wheels were removed. The first time I tried it without them, I fell over within a couple feet and scraped my hands and knees.
For some of us, those scrapes would be a motivator not to fall over again and they would instigate us into trying again to overcome the challenge. We don't settle for not being able to do something. For others, the scrapes aren't worth the risk so they stick with training wheels, no matter how pointless it makes it to ride a bike. The training wheels are all they have and they live their lives dependent on others when the training wheels come off, all the while the rest of us are riding by them without training wheels, some of us even able to turn tricks that otherwise could not be done with training wheels still attached.
No matter how happy you say you are by living a life without risks, deep down you know you're lying to the world and yourself. You envy those bike riders turning the tricks, not just because they can do those tricks, but because they look like they're on top of the world while they do it. You want so much to be in the top rank that instead of raising yourself to those standards, you lower the standards so that you fit in, saying it's not fair that they're better at riding a bike than you are. You stifle those doing tricks by restricting them to training wheels again under the guise of providing them safety. You're happier knowing that everyone else is just as unhappy and disappointed as you.
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