One thing I've been noticing recently cycling back. If anybody knows the Chinese restuarant by Brunswick theres a little cove there. Me and me mate years ago started making rock towers and other art from river debris and the rocks. We use to sit off and watch people walk by and look it at and take photies . Havent been past there until recently and people have started to create stuff there too.
Those simple things again.
I know the place.
Appreciating these simple things in life always gets me thinking of that old saying that youth is wasted on the young. Thing is, when we are young and have our whole world ahead of us we are also immature, lacking in understanding and appreciation and having to make endless amounts of mistakes in life in order to learn. It's only much later on, when we are a lot older that (if we are wise as well as lucky) that we finally learn what's truly important in life.
Sadly, the prevailing culture in our country (western world generally?) is sort of set up to first undermine our self-esteem, then sell it back to us via the products it dictates we need in order to feel fulfilled. We are told how to look, what to wear, what to value, what to think etc... We are basically conditioned to value material things and superficial things rather than the basic things in life that come free but can be extremely rewarding.
What is pushed on us as rewarding in life are things that cost money. People become obsessed with status. Money, what kind of car they drive and what labels they wear. We end up with a very narcissistic society, a rather greedy and self-absorbed society too, and so many people are prepared to walk over anyone they have to in order to get what they believe they need.
I firmly believe in personal responsibility, but at the same time I can also see that our own culture, our own advertisers, our own media and such ideologies as Thatcherism have all sown the seeds of this crop we are currently reaping. They play on the fears of people. The inadequacies and insecurities people feel. They sell people dreams and aspirations, often without the means to achieve them. Many feel cut off, some will then do whatever it takes in order to get that wad, that car, that house, that 'respect', that hollow sense of worth and achievement. But, in order to do so, many have to excel at being bad because it's all they know.
Greed plays a part too. Thatcherism taught a generation that greed was good. Big business has taught us that it's actually people that exhibit psychopathy that make the most successful business people because they aren't hampered by empathy, so can be ruthless. Basically, the worst of human traits are actually encouraged in so many ways by our culture, but we still all shake our heads in horror when the fruits of all this play out in our streets and communities.
Of course, there have always been bad, negative, destructive people, but has there ever been a time in the past like now? Where so many people swan around in a permanent narcissistic, self-important bubble demanding respect despite not having any themselves. Wanting everything but not being prepared to earn it. If they don't have it they see it as ok to thieve it. Dog eat dog. Only the strongest survive, so everyone has to act like a bastard.
To me, our society/culture really has sold us a pup. It's gone a long way towards creating the mess we currently have, as have successive governments who never seem to have the will or the balls to get to the root of the issues that drive what we see playing out today in our communities.
I count myself lucky because, even though it's taken me probably two thirds of my life expectancy to get there, I finally know what's really important (to me) in life now. Things like family, having positive people in your life, enjoying nature and being active and productive. Giving rather than expecting to receive. Many of these things are small and cost nothing, but society doesn't want you to know that happiness can come free. It wants us to believe that it comes through things we have to pay expensively for.
Life's a minefield anyway. It's never been easy. It often takes decades to work out who and what we are, if we ever do. In that process we all make thousands of mistakes, some embarrassing, some monumental and disastrous to both us and others. Suppose to his is where the 'youth being wasted on the Young' comes in for me. When we are best equipped physically to get the most out of life we don't yet have the learned knowledge to do so. I suppose the trick is to work it out young enough so there is still some life in the ageing bones to do so later on.
No one can give us this knowledge either. We really have to learn it the hard way, don't we? If God himself had come to me in my younger years and shown me a better way I'd have no doubt told him to "do one." I'd have still messed my life up. I'd have still chased rainbows looking for fulfillment in things that ultimately offered none.
Not fair is it? All that fucking it up. All that pain. All that heartbreak. All those personal disasters etc just to find out that the simple things in life can be the most rewarding. Still, I'm glad I got this far and still have time to enjoy it.