"Do what you love most and everything will work out"

"Do what you love most and everything will work out"

How many of us have heard this phrase before?  When I was a teenager, I would have said this held some water.  My parents' generation probably also found this to be true, excluding women, of course.  If you were a white man who could, at least, appear straight and possibly Christian, the sky was the limit.  It's not really that way anymore.  That notion left with the existence of Gidget and unicorns.

This post was inspired from many things but the timing was probably linked to a recent article in Huffington post, which got a lot of people "huffy" (I'm so punny).  It was about generation Y people and his views that they are having a hard time in life making it because they were raised with an attitude that everything should come easily to them because they are so amazing an awesome, or so they have been raised to believe.  Is it really doing kids a favor to have sports where no one loses or trophies and awards are given out simply for showing up?  Is it helpful to make life as fun and easy for them as possible because, after all, they are only kids once, so they should have fun while they can?  Or how about the attitude of "I want my kids to have it better than I did"?  How do you define "better"?  What I see is a lot of kids who call their parents "cheap" if they don't hand out money whenever they demand it for whatever they want, or who don't support them indefinitely because working is haaaard <insert whiny voice>.

Then I saw an article countering the other one, which mostly sounded like a generation Y person spouting off about how older people ruined everything for them and everything is too hard now and the economy sucks.  Well, I'm going to do what I do best, and that is to understand all parties.  I agree that the environment is being ruined by the "older" generations.  I agree that the economy is being ruined and everything is a huge mess.  Employment is horrid and I can't imagine being a young person starting out.  That being said, it all still sounds like a bunch of "poor me" blamey bullshit.  I'm not saying they aren't wrong or don't have a point.  What I am saying is that attitude will get them nowhere.  I mean really, if you aren't going to suck it up and adapt to the situation and stop whining, just curl up, lay down and die and stop wasting resources that can go to someone who has a little more will to live under their belt.

Life is hard for everyone right now.  We can stand around and measure who's boo boo hurts the worst if we want.  Older people have it rough because they had an easier time in their earlier adulthood.  They were able to put tons of money away in a retirement fund, which worked directly with the stock market, which was doing quite well... until it wasn't.  My parents have a lot of friends who were near or at retirement age who lost everything.  How would you like that?  You have worked your whole life, seeing the light at the end of the tunnel and looking forward to a comfortable life and then BAM!  Overnight, you are looking at trying to find work when you are well past your prime.  My own parents are doing okay, for now, but are stressing over having to pay over $1200 a month for basic health insurance.  That sounds kind of crazy to me.

I am part of generation X but what I see down the road is basically working until I either die, or until I simply can't work and then I'll wander off into the desert in August and die of exposure so I don't have to feel like another useless mouth to feed.  I don't have a retirement account and I'm doing better than a lot of folks.

Okay so I'm trying to figure out how to say one more thing without incurring some possible wrath from someone I care very much about.  Well, here goes nothing.  One of my pet peeves is someone who whines incessantly about self-imposed misery.  Perhaps the person is too close to the situation to understand how the ONLY source of their misery is themselves and their poor choices.  For instance, if you decide Underwater Basket Weaving sounds really fun and you decide to spend $40,000 getting a degree in it, you really only have yourself to blame when you are struggling to maintain your household flipping burgers and paying off your ginormous student loan.  Right now is when it's time to be WISE about what kind of education you get because most people aren't getting jobs just for having a degree.  You have to get a degree in something that's actually useful and in demand.  Playtime fun degrees can come later, after your miserable career is paying the bills.

Yeah, Yeah, Yeah, that sounds horrible doesn't it?  Like maybe I've given up?  I have a pretty hardcore survival instinct.  My survival instinct says, get a job in something that pays well and has high security.  Hello!  I have that and I'm one of the few people not having to deal with low wages and losing my job.  Do I love my job?  No.  There are things about it I love and that's a conscious choice.  I find things to be happy about.  I find things to love about it.  I count my blessings and move on.  I can afford to take a class in Underwater Basket Weaving if that's what my heart desires.  I don't put all my eggs in the Underwater Basket Weaving career ladder and then complain CONSTANTLY and publicly to everyone I know about how poor I am, which really sounds like a passive aggressive form of begging.

So young folks, do yourselves a favor and SUCK IT UP.  I get that you can't really help the state of things outside yourself but you sure as hell can change your attitude from a shitty victim powerless mentality and put on your big-girl/boy panties and figure out a workable solution, which there *always* is.  Don't worry.  Most people won't bother.  Leave them behind to wallow in their self-pity and be the smart one who does what you have to do to survive.  Save your fun time points for other areas of life.  It can be done.