Squandering One's Life

It's not that life is short...it's that you're dead for so long.

I've honestly never understood what people thought they were going to get out of life by doing what was expected of them by other people.

The number one screw up is marriage. For some people the concept will work but for at least half the population, it won't. People are "expected" to get married, "expected" to pop out kids, "expected" to take on a mortgage...and then the posh car, the right restaurants, clothing, "friends", etc.

I was talking a while back to an acquaintance who is a life and career coach. She was describing how most of the people that come to her are 35+ and trying to figure out what they are going to do when they grow up. They've gotten married, got their career, kids, blah blah blah......and at that point I said, "...and they wake up one day, look around, and say Is this all there is?" She said, "Exactly!"

Don't get me wrong...I'm all for integrity and trying to do the right thing. But at some point you have to have the balls to say "I'm not sacrificing my happiness for yours." Everyone around you freaks out when you begin to change to embrace who you really are. Your surrounding people will go out of their way - without even realizing it - to sabotage you. Even though they don't realize it, there's no reason to make excuses for their behavior.

I have a friend from London that is a biker boy. I'll call him "British" - he's about to have his 45th birthday on Wednesday. But he isn't turning 45. Instead he's going to be celebrating his 30th anniversary .....of drinking Guiness! British is a former hairdresser, London policeman, motorcycle salesman, etc. He gets around but he's open to what life has in store. His motto is: "If it doesn't make ME happy, fuck it. As long as I'm happy, that's all I care about."

For me, I listen to how people speak....when I hear someone say, "I have a responsibility" the R word sounds amazingly like "Drudgery" when it comes out of their mouth every single time.

A person can be responsible and not piss their life away...there IS a happy middle ground.

When someone asks me, "Don't you want to get married?" Not particularly. I see how wives are treated and I would like to believe that I think better of myself than to allow a situation like that to happen. I'd much rather live in sin, get the necessary documents drawn up to give them the legal power they need in case of an emergency and know that I can walk if things aren't so good. I've always thought it showed so much more fortitude to live together than to get married. When you live together, you're there because you want to be there...not because you have to be there.

George Clooney shares many of these sentiments. He's always being badgered about when is he going to marry. He recently shared the following: An uncle, also named George, deserves some credit when it comes to the actor’s “no regrets” philosophy.

“I learned a lot about death from him,” George said. “People keep on asking me, ‘Don’t you want to have kids?’ I have not wanted to have kids. Then they say, ‘Aren’t you afraid of dying alone?’ But we all die alone. I remember Uncle George sitting in bed, 68 years old. He looked at me and said, ‘What a waste.’ … I came to the conclusion that I was not going to wake up one day in my 60s and say, ‘What a waste.’ I was going to grab as much out of this life as I could.”

So in closing, in the immortal words of Wesley Gibson in the film Wanted...

What the fuck have you done lately?




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