It is possible at this point in your
life you will have a long term girlfriend or wife. You may even have
children. You will find validation in your children. You will find
validation in your marriage or long term relationship. Society will
tell you you're doing great, society will remind you in media and
their recycled words and proverbial pats on the back will also
validate you.
You will have lived a life of
mediocrity. This will be OK with you. You will surround yourself with
others that have done the same thing. Those among you who chose a
different more unpredictable path, a not so safe path, those who are
out of their twenties but still live like they are, you and your
group will shun them.
You and the group of underachievers
will validate each other in a big circle jerk. Saying things like
“you've done pretty good for yourself” and “you're the luckiest
because you've got a great woman, great kids, great job.” These
things will keep you from going insane.
But late at night, when you're alone
with your thoughts, you will have regrets. You think of the jobs you
had that you loved, you think of your passions, the ones that others
called hobbies. You think back to it all and maybe you will cry.
Maybe you just take a deep breathe and focus on all the validation
you receive. Maybe at this point you've already convinced yourself
that you wouldn't have done anything different.
You remember back to the days when you
had a choice and you realized you were good at nothing. You had very
limited talents and skills. Everything you wanted to great at, you
were just OK at. You were never going to be the next Kobe Bryant,
Kurt Cobain, Stephen King, Bill Gates. You knew that so you pursued
comfort.
Once you had comfort it seemed
impossible to get away from. Now the walls were closing in. You saw
the others around you. Perfectly content on being just plain. Keeping
the wheel spinning. Worker bees. You saw their spirit and thought,
“Only ten months until my first vacation.” You realized that in
this world you had to take vacations, you needed something to look
forward to.
Suddenly every punch of the time card
became like a bullets through your flesh and closer to the vacation.
The vacation would be the band aid for your bullet wounds. It would
relax you just enough to not take your own life, but not enough to go
back to work happy.
You saw yourself in the mirror then and
realized this was it. There was nothing else. You figured it was time
to settle down because everyone else around you was doing the same
thing. You used your coworkers as a yardstick to measure where you
should be. You met a girl, it was love, all that jazz. Then you
married, then you had kids, then you paid bills, bills, bills. Then
you woke up and realized you still worked at that place.
You woke up and looked in the mirror
and almost a decade had gone by. You didn't notice. You took your
wife and kids to barbecues so that you could get more validation,
more reassurance. You needed it now more than ever and on all levels.
You despised your boss because he didn't pat you on the back at all.
Your life became about what others think of you and trying to get
them to think something high of you.
When you look in the mirror you see
nothing worth thinking high of. You think of missed chances,
opportunities lost. You wish you were younger. You wish you had more
time. You wish just once you could come home to an empty house. You wish
the bills would pause for just an extra day.
At the barbecue you have an extra
couple of beers. At home after dinner you have a few drinks. On the
weekends you try to get as much drinking in as possible. You try to
avoid sex or physical contact with your wife. You dream about the
times when you could have any woman.
And you wake up and look in the mirror,
and you see nothing. No one in the mirror is anyone you know. And you
understand that life is long, for the first time ever you fear death.
Then you go to work.
More of my writing can be found here: https://www.smashwords.com/profile/view/shanegrey
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