Current mood:

contemplative

Controversial Thoughts

If I had three words for people to live by, it would be this:

You deserve better.

But it's funny how few people actually agree with that. They don't want to actually do better; they want to be told how the methods they use are really effective, but are just temporarily out of order. Or how other bad people are keeping them from their goals. Or why their responsibilities are too much right now.

It all starts there. Your hands. On the keyboard and mouse.

You make your world.

I started out as a depressive fat kid with bad hygiene, crippling shyness, and no friends, and have ramped up to an impressive coterie of people who are willing to listen to me. I'm still depressive - damned body chemistry - but I have a beautiful wife, a damned good job, and a pretty satisfying life. That's all thanks to me making some pretty big leaps, some of which paid off, some of which didn't... But I chose all of them.

I'm gonna go out on a limb here and make a statement that will truly terrify a lot of people, but I believe it to be true: About 80%, maybe 90%, of what you have right now, you made. (This drops to perhaps 50% in underdeveloped countries, or even less... But not in a capitalist democracy.)

I believe that hard workers who get along with their bosses and co-workers are eventually rewarded, and those who act as if they want to be in charge will be the boss - and more. I believe that people who refuse to settle for less will get good wives and husbands and partners, people who love them. That people who really want to be rich, damn the costs, will be swimming in lucre, and the people who want to be loved will be loved.

I'm not a published novelist because I'm lazy and I hate sending things out. I'm not rich because I wanted weekend snuggle time with my wife and entire days off to read Harry Potter. I'm not secure because I chose a wife who was headstrong and doesn't dote on my every need. But I am happy where I am, because I also chose to move to Alaska to follow my true love, and I chose to take huge cuts in pay to follow my dream of being a writer, and I chose to really stay with my wife during the hard loveless months because goddammit, she's worth it.

Whatever you wanted, you have it.

Wherever you are now? You chose it.

You went down that path thanks to safety, or financial reasons, or laziness, or driving needs... But you got yourself there. And more importantly, if you're unhappy, you can unmake it.

But you have to admit that you're doing things wrong, and you have to be willing to tear your life down to the roots and start over. You have to say that being here was solely a matter of you, and that your instincts may be betraying you, lulling you into a dead complicity.

The big question that never gets answered by most people: If your life is such a fucking mess, why do you still think that you know what you're doing?

Happiness is there. So says the Buddha... And he's right. If you're miserable, maybe 20% of it is luck. The rest is the slow accretion of your deepest desires... And you need to look around you, to be honest, and to wonder what needs you're fulfilling right now by staying in that place. To see that something in this place is satisfying a need, even if that need is simple laziness - or even worse, the trap of potential, where you never have to know if you'd fail because you can use other people's actions as an excuse. You need to look behind you, see the footprints winding through the long trail of mistakes, and understand that your feet brought you there.

If you want to change, you'd better get moving.

Nobody else can do it but you.