It’s Deep
Beautiful Idiots Proverb #4: “It’s deep, but it’s not that deep”
Life is a very serious thing. As far as I know, this is the only one I get. When considering those stakes, it becomes imperative to do absolutely everything I can to achieve the goals I set for myself. There is no room for error. Every decision I make compounds, resulting in the current station of my life. My time on this planet is limited and therefore every moment I’m not optimizing is a moment wasted. Everyone I know is going to die and the oceans are rising and the forests are burning and animals are going extinct and people are starving and nations are at war. Everything sucks and it’s only getting worse and we should just give up. Right?
Maybe. Maybe it’s a lost cause. Maybe the consequence of our humanly greed is the irreparable damage we’ve done to our planet. Maybe we’re cosmically cursed, the price we pay for a bloodthirsty nature. Perhaps we’re doomed to repeat our pasts because we’re too stubborn to learn and perhaps we’ve wasted too much time to ever reach the heights to which we aspire. If that’s the way you want to look at it, then maybe it really is that bad.
Those are all really big problems that are definitely happening, but 99% of the time they exist outside of your personal influence. You shouldn’t let that dissuade you from doing what you feel compelled to - be it charity or activism or whatever - but I don’t think you should let those problems prevent you from seeing the other side of the coin. It’s imperative that we take time amid the struggle of everyday life to appreciate the beauty it has to offer as well.
Sure, you might step in a puddle, but at least you didn’t drown in the ocean. Maybe you broke a nail, but you still have your finger. A world leader has probably farted in the middle of an intense negotiation, and somebody probably laughed. The sun still sets and it rises again, the seasons change and we cry and laugh and think and learn and spend time with people we love. So you might lose a day here or there, but you still have your life, and you might change the world but you don’t have to change the world. When you look at it that way… it’s deep, but it’s not that deep.
-J.P.
