Just over half a year since last post, what a lazy bastard. Just to catch everyone up: license suspended, no work popping up, spend a lot of time hanging out. Life has seemingly again become eerily similar to a prison sentence. Wake up, exercise to sharpen body, tv, books and movies to sharpen mind, eat, sleep. I get out of the cage once a week for nfl sunday and drinks with friends. If all work and no play makes Jack a dull boy, what does all play and no work make him?
I witnessed brilliance yesterday. I watched the first season of The Misfits. The premise of the show is simple: bunch of young felons forced to do community service together get hit by lightning and develop super powers. Whereas most mediums that tackle this subject go way over the top with the themes of right and wrong and good and evil, this particular show treats it in a very real world way which is refreshing. What would the weird, shy virgin kid do if all the suddden he could turn invisible? He'd go peeping. Obviously. And that is exactly what he did. Refreshing.
Final episode of the first season, the main characters run up against a girl who has developed the power to brainwash people and has used her power to start a born again-like youth group, leading all the young stragglers she can find down a righteous path of clean living and proper behavior and modest dressing. One by one she starts to turn the main characters until all that is left is wise-cracking smartass Nathan and socially awkward Simon. Nathan attempts to save the others by taking the leader of the youth group, she with the brainwashing powers, hostage at gunpoint. Finding himself surrounded by the group he makes his final stand on the rooftop of the community center where they work and gives the following impassioned speech:
"She's got you thinking this is how you're supposed to be. Well it's not! We're young! We're supposed to drink too much! We're supposed to have bad attitudes and shag each other's brains out! We are designed to party! This is it! Yeah, so a few of us will overdose or go mental. But Charles Darwin said, "You can't make an omelette without breaking a few eggs". And that's what it's all about: breaking eggs! And by eggs I mean getting twatted on a cocktail of class A's. If you could just see yourselves. It breaks my heart! You're wearing cardigans! We had it all! We fucked up bigger and better than any generation that came before us! We were so beautiful! We're screw ups. I'm a screw up and I plan to be a screw up until my late twenties, maybe even my early thirties. And I will shag my own mother before I let her or anyone else take that away from me!"
The modern rite of passage perfectly summed up. I was elated. But it also got me thinking extra long and hard about how myself, a screw up in his early thirties, fulfills the rite of passage and comes out the other side as an adult. Obviously this conundrum isn't one that gets solved overnight but I was bolstered by the fact that I am just one of millions who is on this path. So far I've fared pretty well. I never overdosed. No STD's or kids. Make a decent wage. Things could have easily turned out different and a lot more horrific. I find it reassuring that now, at 33, I still have the majority of my life in front of me and have the intelligence and capability to do anything I want despite the fact I pretty much squandered the past decade. Had I existed one generation ago I'd already be married with 1 - 3 kids, a decade under my belt at some job, and a house. All of that will come eventually and it seems as though I am now starting to turn that corner.
The irresponsibility that thrilled me for the past decade is starting to get boring. Now I start to repair the damage that the lost decade has caused and start to lay the foundation on which I will build my perfect future.
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