I spent 6 straight hours giving life counseling to a friend last night, and several more today.
I am exhausted.
My roommate calls me The Sage. I guess this is because I spend so much time thinking about life's mysteries and developing my own thoughts and theories. I may as well share with you some of what I spoke of, so that others can have this knowledge that no one seems to share with others in life.
No one is happy all of the time.
People get into ruts. Look at glossy magazines. Why do you think it's a billion dollar industry? People are deparate for solutions for this timeless issue. Helen of Troy probably felt like she was in a rut at some time. And you wonder why Cleopatra had such fabulous make-up?! If Cleopatra were alive today, she would be featured on that page in InStyle where they diagram the make-up of a celebrity. Helen of Troy would be a Lifetime movie. Think about that.
Relationships are a full-time job. Unlike a project that can be neatly tied-up, these are something with a beginning and no end.
Much of full-time employed America is complaining about lacking a quality of life. Read the papers, they're filled with yards of page space with interviews and expert opinions about this. Europeans have progressed beyond us in this area and modified their work days and years, but even they are being pushed by the global economy to meet steep demands that inevitably short their personal lives. This is not a new predicament. Farmers and businessmen centuries ago worked hard. The difference is that their family units were more intact, divorce was not an option, and they could count of stretches of unemployment based on economic demand, less advanced business tools and natural disasters that cyclically put them out of work.
Men and women speak different languages. The key to success is learning how to speak the opposite sexes language.
No one's opinion about your life or your relationship matters. It's what you think and feel that counts. You can poll and question a thousand people and everyone will offer a different perspective. The trick is to find a solution you are comfortable with and can make work for you.
Nobody has all the answers in life.
Nobody is living without questioning the experience at some point.
I asked my brother today, "Don't you ever have a breakdown and freak out about your life?"
He paused and said, "Let me tell you something. Sometimes I come home and I look about and I wonder how I ended up single at X living alone in this shitty apartment with no money and I think, why bother anymore. Let's just end this now."
"Really?" I questioned, shocked.
"PG, if you had said to the 17 year-old me, a senior in HS at the top of the world, that in 17 more years I would be this loser working my ass off and getting nowhere, living alone in a shitty apartment with no girlfriend or wife, I would have laughed in your face and said 'No Way. Impossible'."
And suddenly it all made sense to me. Nobody knows. Nobody is happy. Everyone expects there to MORE out of life and can't truly believe that *this* is it.
"But why doesn't anyone talk about this? How could no one have warned me about this years ago," I asked.
"Because nobody asks," he said.
"Nobody asks because they are afraid of the answer. They are afraid of the bleakness of reality, " I realized. Nobody asks because if you knew this truth, why would you continue to play the game?
And this, is yet another one of life's secrets that I discovered today. Someone call Oprah. There's a daytime audience out there who needs this information.
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