Human life is not for everyone. Let’s face it, some people are not well suited for an earthly existence. They struggle to adjust to life’s many peaks and valleys and continue struggling just as hard at eighty years of age (if they happen to make it that far) as they did at eight months and eight years and eighteen blue moons. Just because you were born doesn’t mean the road ahead is perpetually straight, perpetually flat, perpetually sunny, paved with newly poured, pothole-free asphalt throughout its duration, and overhung with apple and citrus trees boasting epicurean fruit ripe for the plucking every step of the way. For some people that scenario may be and is the case, but for others—for an unfortunately copious number, in fact—the aforementioned road is a godawfully curvy, hilly, overcast, pothole-infested nightmare with poisonous snakes periodically lunging at them unexpectedly from those suddenly barren apple and citrus trees. And these challenged people have no choice but to adapt quickly and learn to survive as opposed to thrive, to count their limited blessings instead of whimpering loudly about the frequent hurdles that spring up in their way, to settle for small pleasures in contrast to being the recipients of major, oftentimes undeserved, largesse, and—climactically…..to be satisfied with mediocrity in the end. Yes, that’s right, to settle for much-derided mediocrity and, furthermore, to then feign ersatz happiness with same. Act like you’re a pig joyously gulping down slop compared to its erstwhile friend stuffed inside a livestock trailer that is being backed up to the intake door to a bustling slaughterhouse. Act like you’re the life of the party garnering flirtatious glances from every voluptuous, bodacious harlot in the joint rather than perpetually embodying the habitual wallflower. Act like you’re the hammer for a change instead of always manifesting the nail. Yes, I know these are awfully big asks, but what other recourse is there? Huh?! Bawling over your dinner each night while chronically decrying the unfairness and terribleness of life? Life is not fair by any stretch of the imagination, and these faux heroic people stand as Case Example #1 to support this assertion. Remember: They did not choose life; the metaphysical arbiters of life arbitrarily chose them and pursuantly threw myriad significant obstacles in their pathways as the Arrow of Time unalterably inched its way rightward. That said, these lost souls are nonetheless left to deal with the mess they were handed in the best manner they know how. Nothing is fair also means that EVERYTHING is fair…..in love, in war, and in life itself. GET USED TO IT!!!
Fred's Soapbox 