A letter to a younger me

Dear AAW,

what I'm writing may seem the most corny , syrupy , sccharine tripe , something that you don't need right now, with all the things going down.

but you DO need it.

you need to get this weet, "life is as good as you preceive it" bit, this "stop and smell the roses" gunk, becuase there isnt much else that i can write.

life is complicated,

people are brutal to each other,

the weatherf is cold,

the mud sticks to your shoes.

but.

things that you choose to see are the things that will dominate your perspective.

you can choose to look at all the filth, but you can also choose to focus on the beutiful shapes, the sounds, the tastes, and most imprtantly at the peoople who are around you and do love you.

a wise man told me once: crossing through this life, is like swimming through a river of shit. it stinks and it's not hard to see unpleasent things floating around. but if you do, you will never see the water lilies flowering.

i hate to tell you, but life doesnt get much easier when you grow up. sure, the imbacility of phisical confrontations will largly dissappear, but there will laways be jerks and bullies and cowards who stand by. finding meaning in this life will also be next to impossible, because theer isnt any real meaning. what we do doesn't really matter. it doesnt change the direction of the universe, it doesnt save the world. but meaning is something you can find for yourself.

you can find it in creating, you can find it in giving and helping, you can find it in the rush that you can get from things.

and if you're lucky, you can also find it with other people. have a family, have someone to care for. once you have that, suddenly looking for some ultra-important meaning, seems a waste of time, so does feeling sorry for yourself, and so does hating things .

so live with the hardships, find joy in love and creating things. it is not a sexy, easy thing to do, but it is he best and only thing you can do, if you want an alternative to this heavy, wretched feeling.

last bit of advice:

find humor as a solution.

we may not know how to lead our life in the best way, but we do have a way to avoid certain failures. this is our sense of humor. it is a sense that is just as important as our hearing and sight.

a humorless person is blind to absurdity, to maladjustment to reality.

whenever you see something and it seems funny in some way, it means that something is wrong.

an absurd situation is absurd, laughable because there is some veruy critical failure in logic.

even something stupid, like a guy slipping in a banana is an indication. something to learn from and avoid.

someone writing a silly pun? surly it is not funny.

it sure isn't. something is wrong with the writer's connection to our culture.

so listen to this little "radar" in your head. when it tickles, be aware of it.