Mentalechoes

I often wonder if I doing anything right. I don’t mean individual things like ironing a work shirt, or my tax returns, I’m talking about the whole life thing. I see people that really seem to be inherently better at it than others. By this I mean they seem to make decisions that improve their situation year to year. Whereas there are those of us that seem to kind of stand still and not move, like we’re living with our feet stuck in a block of cement. Then there are the times when we actually seem to go backwards, like after making some really crappy decisions we are worse off then when we started.

I know you shouldn’t do this, but I do compare myself to other people - friends mainly - and see where they are and see where I am, to gauge the relative success or failure of my life so far. It’s pointless doing this because we all live our lives the way we want according to our value systems and individual goals so it’s hard to tell who’s doing better than who. But there are clear indications that I see, such as the friend I have who has loads more money, a happy family and pretty low stress. I figure he’s got it together better than I do, cause he looks way ahead of me at the same time of life.

I question my decision making and ask whether something I am doing will improve where I am. I realised a long time ago, when it comes to life there is no black and white but only shades of grey, so you can’t give absolute yes-or-no answers, only judgement calls. That’s why so many people spend so much money getting their futures told; they want to improve the odds of making a better judgement for a decision. It’s the whole reason why some bullshit con artist can sucker hundreds of thousands of dollars out of people for horoscope readings. We’re all just trying to get an advantage with making better life decisions. Why the fuck anyone would want to use a horoscope as an analysis tool for determining the best course of action in life is totally way beyond me, but different courses for different horses I guess.

The thing is I look at people like an aunty and uncle I had who lived in some small town in Queensland (Australia) and who really didn’t attempt anything ambitious with their lives, they were just ordinary country people who raised a couple of kids and then retired. The biggest events in my aunty’s life was the price of peaches at the local store going up a couple cents every year or so with inflation. Now by my own standards these people were just dead boring and dull as fuck. But you know, they were happy in their own way and they didn’t worry about all the crap that I worry about. They didn’t dream as big, but then they also didn’t suffer any loss by not acheiving their dreams. So who’s more successful? Me because I am stressed out and broke but living in another country with a jetsetting lifestyle, or them because they were stable and methodical and living a lifestyle so repetitive it was almost a looping time continuum that was perfectly insulted from change?

I wish I could see into the future sometimes and see where I will be in 10 years, and 20… and 30. To see if I magically somehow manage to pull it all together and I become this wild amazing success with shitloads of cash and lots of stuff and I acheive everything I set out to do. Or even if I am just happily settled down with a nice middle class lifestyle (sometimes I figure that wouldn’t be so bad… not often though). Most of the time though I am happy I can’t see into the future because if you knew how it was all going to turn out, then you’re stuck with what you see. How crap would that be if you were some useless bastard living in a gutter with nothing but rats for friends. Could happen!

In the end, perhaps the only way to know if you are doing this life thing right is to really ask yourself the question: am I happy? If you can honestly say yes to this, then I’d say you are doing good. If not, well then I guess you know you need to take a hard look at yourself and ask why. Either way, you’ve got your answer.

Padwanna.