Is life nothing but a game, a competition, with the goal being to gain power and win? Must we treat all our fellow men as allies or enemies, always staying Machiavellian in our pursuit of power?
Or is LOVE the meaning of life? Must we be like John Lennon, loving every man, woman, creature and plant with open arms?
But wait, it's a dog-eat-dog world out there. Every man for himself. This world's a jungle and if you don't protect yourself, you'll pay. After all, it's the hippies that die first.
I don't know, that's the wrong mindset and we can't think like that. We are one, and we must work together to create a happy and equal society. With a quarter of our food being thrown out every year, it is a sin that we still let people starve. The system must be broken.
And so you have the liberal-conservative paradigm that is stretching across this country and bouncing in between my ears every day. I never quite know which side to play. It's like the classic caricature of an angel and a devil on each soldier, but instead it's Al Gore and Ted Nugent.
One week I'll be shopping at Whole Foods, smoking and talking about how fucked up the "system" is. The next week I'll be out shooting guns in the desert, updating my stock portfolio and talking about how the homeless need to get off their asses and work.
I've lived with free-flowing, whimsical hippies and I've lived with straight-edge, patriotic conservatives and I have come to see the importance of appreciating the beauty in everyone.
When I tack on the conservative mindset in the presence of my granola-crunching joint-packing friends, boy do I despise them. And when I'm all about free love in the presence of my straight-laced, well-to-do conservative friends they make me sick.
Instead of seeing your friend in tye-dye as a dumb, lazy and free-riding hippie, appreciate his compassion, openness and spontaneous nature. Instead of looking at your conservative friend as a straight-edge, paranoid and greedy bastard, admire their loyalty, dependability and practicality.
Whichever environment and whomever's company you find yourself in, embrace it. Enter their spirits. As they say, "When in Rome, do as the Roman's do." You'll save yourself a lot of undue stress and anger that way. Just try it, see how it feels and get back to me.
Amen to this. For me, it's hard to admire the hippies and liberals because I'm about as straight-edge conservative as you can get. On top of this I will always be like this and don't count on my mind ever changing. I have lots of people in my life who I am close to who also happen to have the complete opposite views as me. In order to stay close with these people I have to completely avoid the topic of politics, or else I may want to throw them out a window for their stupidity. In the end, friendship is more important, and people are entitled to their views, no matter how wrong I think they are.
ReplyDeleteI like the first two paragraphs in this especially--it's like reading a list of stereotypes and cliches. I think if you kept creating paragraphs out of cliches this could even be a really effective essay. If, at the end, you further expand upon the analysis of said cliches (and, as you've pointed at, how nonsensical they really are) the impact of this piece could be pretty stellar. Thanks for the read.
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