Man, I just typed this up, and I feel a whole lot better...
WARNING, foul language, ascerbic humor, and pedantic life coaching ahead.
BEGIN:
I, Jack Joseph Raynard, want you to relax.
Close your eyes. No, do it. Concentrate on your breath for a few moments, then look back up here.
I'm going to tell you a few things that I've learned. Take them, use them, laugh at them, whatever, just listen with an open mind and heart-
1)
You are what you eat.
Not only is this a clever response to anyone calling you a pussy, it's also a truism. What are you? Obviously a collection of food molecules that thinks it's self aware. Soon enough your molecules will be distributed again. maybe in a billion years you'll become part of a plant that'll be eaten by an animal that dies. Just as there are molecules that were part of dinosaurs in you, you will be part of them.
There's no reason to worry about death. You can't die, because you were never really alive. Your life is the greatest time span you will ever experience and since everything is relative, it's an infinity to you. Tofu will only make your life seem longer in comparison to other "humans," just as smoking will make it seem shorter. Shorter and unhappier, in my experience.
Life is infinite.
2)
Ever feel like *expletive deleted*it?
Like everyone around you is judging you, nobody likes you, you're ugly, too fat, too skinny, too tall, too short, too light, too dark, etcetera ad infinitum ad naseum. Like you don't belong, like you're not good enough, like no one will accept you cause you have nothing to offer?
This is called self centered fear. Everyone feels this way at times. If you've figured out a way not to, tell me how. In many ways, life is a lot about not letting this self centered fear control your actions.
Lets do away with all your negative internal monlogues right here: You are the product of billions of years of genetic selection. You are, just by being alive to see this, one of the most powerful/smart/sexy/tough/virile/fast/cunning organism to ever exist.
Now all you have to do is squash that self centered fear and go out and spread that genetic code, baby.
3)
Try to control the future. No, right now, do it.
Is it working? Do you have that car, that life, that job, that size bank account you wanted? Thought not.
We are permanently traveling into the future, selecting from essentially infinite possible universes. The best and only way to change the future is to take action right now, this very second.
Right now (in all it's possibilities) is all we have. More on this later.
To have one foot in tomorrow and one foot in yesterday gets you all set to piss all over today.
4)
All you need is inside of you. In the end, no one can make you do anything you don't want to. This includes feel happy or sad. Eleanor Roosevelt only had it half right when she said 'No one can make you feel inferior without your consent..' No one can make you feel SUPerior either.
You may not be able to control your emotions, but you can definitely control your attitude. There's a world of difference between:
"I'm so down, life sucks, I'm tired of trying"
and
"Man life is hard some times. However the pain of living is worth is, because it's a didactic like no other, and allows me to learn lessons that I can maybe teach to others to improve their lot. I can't be self centered and only think about how bad my life is. Also, I know the good times will come again."
Which leads me to my fifth and final point.
5)
The good times as well as the bad times will pass away, just as everything does. All we have is this very moment. Instead of losing it to tension or self centered fear why don't we devote it to love, to helping our fellow human, to passing along hard-earned lessons and wisdom so others can learn from our mistakes, and make a whole new set of mistakes.
Which is why I'm up typing this at 1:34AM on my seventeenth birthday writing this.
I love you all.
