The Matter at Hand

So, life is a complicated thing.

When I was young I thought everything followed rules and that a series of social decisions would yield a specific life-result. To a certain extent, I have found this to be true. For example, if you attend college, pass the required classes, and finished the coursework necessary for a major program, you will be granted a degree. This is a very solid and simple example. The erroneous expectation would be that a degree would grant guaranteed happiness via the earning of monies working at a "good" job - one that you assume you will enjoy before you ever choose a major course track at University.

As a youth the rules that I assumed applied were even less founded in reality, and relied much more heavily on my assumptions and unrealistic expectations. (On a side note, whenever I refer to "unrealistic expectations" I am directly citing the cause of much unhappiness. Think about it, when you are upset about a situation in life, it is because you expected something else to happen and that expectation was not necessarily reasonable. These expectations can be anything, expecting a job to be happy, friends to never get mad at you, difficult situations to simply not arise, you name it. So as I mention unrealistic expectations, know that this is the concept I am alluding to.) The expectations I had were based on many unfounded social ideals like a persons "coolness," their social standing, and their ability to impress people (the concept of people was always vague and undefined, because I certainly didn't care about impressing the preppy majority in schools.) I thought that if one could achieve all these things, luck in relationships, skill and finesse in social situations making one popular and respected, that all the pleasures of life would follow. I truly thought that if I could be as amazing as I viewed other people that everything in my life would be perfect.

And then I started to grow. My eyes opened to the different facets of life, the way people interact, and I watched those who have what they want and those who are unhappy. Slowly it started to dawn on me that happiness and the pleasures of life have a lot more to do with a positive attitude and stubbornness in the pursuit of them then anything else.

Hypothetically, I may be able to stack my outcome in life if I can set these observations to use.