Don’t Go to College Parts 5 & 6: Death & Dismemberment/ Bitter Pill
Word up homeslices.
Lucky you. You get two parts today! Mainly because part 5 is four sentences and three fragments.
Once again, to start from the beginning, go here.
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I saw a cabbie with a sign. Antigua. “What the hell is an Antigua?” was my first thought.
I consulted my guide book. An Antigua turned out to be a supposedly charming colonial town about an hour from the airport. Guatemala City vs. Antigua. Death and dismemberment vs. Baroque architecture.
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Don’t get me wrong. Middle management is great for most people. I’m just hoping that there’s something better in store for me.
Things have become too easy for us. Moderate wealth is easily attainable. Our parent’s generation was obsessed with not being poor. Our generation won’t be poor. Oh we’ll have good times and bad, but ultimately, none of us will starve. Most of us will have big ass televisions. Where does this leave us? What do we strive for? Fulfillment? Hardly.
I become ill whenever the purchasing of a house is referred to as the “American Dream.” I’m sure at one point owning a home was actually an accurate symbol of the American Dream. Maybe it meant that you had bettered yourself enough to be able to become a homeowner: a rarity, an owner of land. Now it’s easy to make yourself part of the new bastardized American dream. Mortgage peddlers are chomping at the bit to get you on board. All you have to do is saddle yourself with 40 years worth of debt. Which at some point you’re likely not going to be able to pay. You become enslaved by this debt. You can’t take chances. You can’t start your own business and leave the drudgery of your current job that pays the bills and leaves you empty. Security is your number one priority. This strikes me as the antithesis of the American dream. But that’s just me.
Most college graduates are bargain hunters of life choices. Standing in lines of patient ambition to feed at the trough of middle management. If I sacrifice five years of my life at this many hours a week, I can sustain a certain level of materialism or stability. Our generation has become the Clark Griswold of life planning: boisterous and enthusiastic to reach to the Wally World that, at its core, is ultimately empty, shut down, and tacky.
A friend once recounted to me a conversation she had with her mother. She, as most of us do at one point (or continually), was struggling with her job. It wasn’t exceptionally difficult or burdensome, she said. She just wasn’t happy doing it. She called her mom for advice. Her mother told her that sometimes there are more important things in life than being happy. She quit her job the next day. Mom’s years of trading her own dreams for happiness, stability and societal norms of success had jaded her to the point where personal fulfillment was just another casualty.
Hi I'm David. I'm horrendously unphotogenic, so this is as close as you get! Cheers!
September 8th, 2009 at 11:07 am
parks closed, moose out front should have told you.