Monday, December 2, 2013

The World Sucks, Doesn't It? (2)

This is not a continuation of my previous post, it's simply a shortening of it, think of it as a summary written in a more declarative tone.


Most people agree that the world sucks in one way or another, although the extent to which it sucks may vary from person to person. Everyone thinks this way. While everyone thinks this way, everyone should think in the opposite way. The majority of people consider life to be boring and they would rather live in that fantasy world of their dreams where they play the protagonist and always wins. Living in this fantasy world is the wrong approach to life.

In the fantasy world you always win, that's what's wrong about it. If you always win, you will not know defeat. That might sound like a good thing, however failure is better than winning. When you win you learn nothing, when you fail you have the opportunity to learn everything. One needs to seize this opportunity and learn from their mistakes. In this fantasy world of constant victory, when something upsets you it will simply cease to exist or it will have never existed at all. If this was the case with the real world, the world would have ended long ago. If we look to our mistakes as our achievements in life instead of our failures, the world would look very different.

Look at your life, what do you see? I worthless human striving for something so high yet they can't reach it? A being setting their goals to where no improvement is gained? Or you see someone that is setting their goals in the right spot? You  need to set your goals just out of your reach, then all you have to do is push yourself to stretch a bit to reach it. Changing is quite hard, but one should not give up. When you make a piece of art, it's always good to take a step back from your work while you're working on it and re-adjust it. If it looks a bit bad do you scrap the whole thing? No, you simply try to fix your mistakes. What if it is bad?

In art, one can say this is too bad and irreparable, I'll just have to scrap this. This is where art and real life differ, you should never give up. In art you can start new, but in real life, you only have one canvas. You were only given one canvas to work with. This is not the time to mess up, this is your chance to shine, if it means changing everything, maybe it's for the better. If you were given a dilapidated canvas it doesn't matter. As long as you have one you can make something, maybe you can even utilize the materiality of the deformed canvas to your advantage. Create something different then others.

Some say the world is fair. That's not true. People get different opportunities and some live better lives than others. Yet we only have one life and we need to live it to the extent that we can, when our lives end, you should not be sad that you ran out of time. Your life ends for a reason, it means you are done. While the piece may look incomplete to you, it's done, and it's over. It's time to put down the brush. Even if your piece is unfinished, maybe the people next to you glanced over and have been inspired. This inspiration is a spark of hope. You've given something to the world that can't be taken away.

What if you've already done enough. It's never okay to use that as a reason to end your life. Putting down your brush intentionally doesn't mean you're done, it means you've given up. You need to wait patiently for the teacher. Only he can tell you when you are done, no one else, and if you sit there waiting for the teacher to say you are done, he will not come, you are not done. You are sitting on your life doing nothing. Death by old age is everyone's goal. Wisdom comes with old age. Once enough wisdom is accumulated, your death becomes inevitable. Maybe death shouldn't be such a bad word. Why not lighten up the mood? You have that chance in your life, drive your life forward and upward.

1 comment:

  1. Fun with grammar...

    "This is not a continuation of my previous post, it's simply a shortening of it, think of it as a summary written in a more declarative tone."

    This is two sentences -> "...a shortening of it. Think of it ..."
    Understand why?

    "One needs to seize this opportunity and learn from their mistakes."

    Very common error. Simply put, "one" is singular and "their" is plural. When you use a singular noun or pronoun - student, one, you, etc., the possessive needs to agree. Although to our ear "their" sounds fine, it's wrong.

    So, the fix is:
    "One needs to seize this opportunity and learn from his or her mistakes."

    Redundancy here.
    "If we look to our mistakes as our achievements in life instead of our failures, the world would look very different."

    Since the whole piece is about life you can just write:
    "If we look to our mistakes as our achievements instead of our failures, the world would look very different."

    Further, we only need one "our" since again it is clear whose mistakes we are talking about:
    "If we look to our mistakes as achievements instead of failures, the world would look very different."

    This is much better. You are using too many commas. Really you are writing very short sentences and connecting them needlessly with commas. Be ok with writing a short sentence. They work. See?

    ReplyDelete