Ah, to be young again. To feel like the whole world will bow at my feet and conform to what I think it should be. To embody the essence of hope, faith and idealism. To know that over time things will change, the inner knowledge that if I do enough the entire world can be made over in the image I want it to be.
It's bullshit I bought into when I was younger, less cynical and beat down by the World and the general suckage that is humanity. A grand set of delusions I carried back then. I was convinced that things were going to way I thought they would due to a set of pretty thoughts I had. I was going to change the World, be something, do something meaningful with my life and have a lasting impact on all of humanity.
It's fed to you in school, the idea that you can do or be anything you want to be. That the circumstances you were born into, the things that pushed you around and shaped you weren't really shaping you. That I was more than everyone else, blah, blah, blah, insert American dream speech here.
That is not the best beginning for this, it's simply me reminding myself of WHY I have made some of the decisions I made, what the folly of youth really was. Youth isn't about age, it's about experience in my opinion.
I do a lot with the non-profit sector and homeless individuals in my community. I started this portion of my journey from an Idealist's perspective. I was going to change things, make a difference, do something extraordinary, have an impact on my community in some lasting way.
Have I accomplished that? Hell no, the only thing I have exposed myself to is a group of individuals that are crazy, on drugs, lazy as fuck, nasty, or bad luck magnets. I have managed to throw myself into a career path where I come home at night and sob at the hopelessness I see on a daily basis.
They come in and out in and out. Off the streets for a few months and right back on them. Off the drugs and using again a few months later. Getting treatment for the mental shit and then disappearing for months on end. Human trash in so many ways and I was a smiling, happy, let me help you face to be used by them, to be treated as some servant and not what I was, a person VOLUNTEERING their time or working for minimum wage to help them.
There's no gratitude. All I get is give me, give me, give me, why is my laundry taking so long, screamed at, or worse. The other people that are doing what I am doing have worse attitudes than they do. They are constantly being shitty to each other and our 'clients' as well.
TMI right? Well, it's there for a reason. People build up and glamorize things they haven't experienced. We decide that we understand something based on no experience and walk around full of these ideas of what it is, without having lived it. The homeless are victims, the poor need help, violence and murder are cool, I would totally kill every zombie I saw bullshit that exists in every individuals head.
Idealism runs rampant in the Western mind. The reality of certain things will break you.
No comments:
Post a Comment