A Misanthrope’s Menu of Wisdoms and Clichés

It is difficult to make friends. The times when we were children and everybody was a friend change to still feeling like children and counting friends on your fingers.

It is easier to have men as friends. If things don’t work out you could always have sex. With women, well, you could always have sex with them too, technically.

As grown-ups, we say our “thank-you”s and please”s. The first we mostly don’t mean the latter we crave, but nobody listens anyway.

When we were little, everybody was concerned about us paying attention, learning and concentrating on what is important. As grown-ups, the world around us tries its hardest to undo all of the aforementioned. Except our friends and people we live with. They always think that we haven’t tried hard enough.

Since we were children, we’ve forgotten almost everything which without a doubt constituted the best times of our lives. As adults, we remember everybody that’s ever made us miserable. And continue to think daily, hourly, minutely, about those who are still doing it.

We rot in our own contradictions and although we all say that we love the Sun and fresh air, we continue to stay indoors, in the stale and shabby environments of our living rooms, just because of a few laws of physics. Which are very vague, anyway.

We learn from experience, as much as we used to when we were children. There is also theory. And then, there is compromise. We, with our overgrown egos, continue to sell ourselves short. The dollar-store effect.

The most typical thing you can experience as a grown-up is that you are always tired. And misunderstood. If there was a way of making us un-tired or better understood, it would still not make us satisfied. We, humans, are one bloody tired miserable dissatisfied lot.

And I haven’t even started on love. It is blind, dumb and has memory lapses worse than a surviving hippy. It’s been around since the beginning of time and it is the only old hag sought after more than a bombshell. It’s a cult, cross-pollinated with a devil’s affair.

We all fear death and believe in happy endings. In the end we all die.

As grown-ups, we value and teach wisdom to youngsters, to each other, our neighbours and across the nation, on video tapes, DVDs and in print, at an affordable price payable in three installments. We also look for cure for misery and every other illness. For that we get called on the phone at dinner time by people we don’t know who tell us that other people need us. If we are in need there is a different number to call.

And now… a grand finale? No such thing, sorry. Live and hope. The latter is not mandatory (well, neither is the first), but it still fools us into believing that things get better just because we want them to. Now, that takes faith.