Choices

A large portion of our insignificant lives is dedicated to getting into a good college.

It starts with all those toys and baby books parents buy. They buy stuff that will help the baby learn and grow smart and whatnot. They even make the poor kids watch those crap shows about colors and letters and numbers that have those creepy mutant animals/whatever they are as hosts. And those shows just get weirder every day.

Then you go to preschool where to learn to mingle with other children and I guess that's the point in life where you're formally introduced to human interactions, communication, society, all that good stuff that you kind of hate later, if you happen to turn into a rebellious little social outcast teenager.

And then comes school. That's something we all hate but have to go through to kind of get a sense of what the hell kind of world we're living in. Oh no, wait, that's college; school is just the incubator. Anyway. You learn not only academic stuff but also the basics of society and how humanity works: the bullies (whose role is later taken on by bosses and the occasional abusive partner), the cliques, the things you put a hell of a lot of effort into just so life can squish you like an insignificant little bug (yes, I'm talking about tests and examinations...hooray!). We go through so much shit in school, all the while thinking, "man, I can't wait for this to be over!".

Oh really? But what comes after school? Another 4 (or even more! holy crap!) goddamn years of work, and this time ON YOUR OWN. No mom or dad to help you finish the science fair project or to wake you up in the mornings so you're not late to school. In less than a year you make this huge jump in independency (well, not everyone, but a good deal of people. And anyway, what I'm getting at is that we leave like 12 or more years of schooling - all that fucking tedious work - just to go into more? We are such goddamn masochists. Or whoever invented this was).

And then, you know, that's when you get ready to go into the REAL shark-infested pool. You know, not regular sharks, but the radioactive kind with two heads and metal claws for fins. Yeaaaah. Oh and the really fun part about the real world is that you spend your life working just so when you die they put you in a nice, expensive coffin with velvet inside and 24 karat gold details on the outside (including the handles!).

And what I've been thinking is all of this comes down to choices. Mainly your college choice, because that kind of sort of defines what you'll be doing until you kick the god-fucking-damn bucket and get your stupid fancy coffin. It's all about making the right decisions in life; paper or plastic, salad or fries, Princeton or this college in the middle of the woods no one's ever heard of...

I think it's the fact that there are so many options what makes it so frightening. It's so hard to know if you're making the best choice, especially when there are about 4 different voices in your head and none of them agree on anything. What if I fuck up and I choose the wrong major? What if I choose what college I'm going to based on where my friends are going? What if I don't get that scholarship I need and I end up going to a community college or just not going anywhere at all?

It scares me shitless that I keep changing my mind about stuff, that I can't really tell what college I'll end up in. Sometimes I worry so much about the future that it troubles the present I'm living in, and I fall into a vicious mental trap that doesn't let me sleep. And so I stay up until 5 am wondering about life, and I just wonder about everything and I know I've made the wrong choice worrying and that just screws me up all over.

But therein lies the beauty of life. We have the ability to make our lives what we want them to be. It's probably the best we can get out of it...Well, the ones who can, because there are people out there that just take what they can get and can't even bring themselves to think of other possibilities.

So, yeah, I complain about life. I bitch a lot. But think about it, life does suck for everyone, at one point or another. If you're poor, it sucks cause you have no money. If you're stinkin' rich, it sucks cause you have too much money and you have no idea of what else to do with it (after recreating yourself through surgery, of course). But, in the end, we will all die and get together in the after-life to laugh it off with a cup of coffee and some butter cookies.