Unfortunate Cookie

In life there will present all manner of discouragements to being more than average. We are encouraged to get an education in order to get a good job with a well established company. The way our dreams are described is depressing. Words such as logical, reasonable, sane are used. Think ahead, we’re told.

For the average individual being intrepid is discouraged. We should blend in with our peers and be excited about mediocrity. We are to rejoice for the privilege of having a job, not necessarily your dream job, but “in today’s market”, it’s the best you can hope for.

With all of the verbal and subliminal cues telling us to conform, imagine my ire when I cracked open a fortune cookie and was told again to conform. It was as if the forces of life were raising arms to surround me with negativity. I imagined the field of war and I stood alone as soldiers of misfortune were rising up to flank me into giving up. The pressure to settle is psychotic, and when you can see it, you can fight it.

When you are able to recognize the subliminal messages sent to imprint your psyche with normality, you are able to war more valiantly. The question now on the table is how hard are you willing to war? How determined are you to break the hold of  society’s mold and become so much more than what you have been told you can be?

It’s not easy to break the mold. When eyes turn in your direction, not with admiration, but censure. When smiles of become frowns of disdain and disapproval. When voices of encouragement become “the voices of reason”, telling you why what you want is not reasonable. I hate that word reasonable.

Logic and sanity is oft times in the eye of the beholder. One man’s sanity is another’s purgatory. The sanity of saying no to your dreams and buckling down for the “American Dream”. My dream is not your dream, and your dream is not mine. Does that make my dream wrong? I allege it is not.

Life is not as short as you would think it is. When you’re miserable, minutes feel like hours and years can become eternity. Suddenly life becomes an existential blur, each day looking like the last. We have the same conversations with the same people every day. We wake up to the same view and the same routine that leads us to those same people that we’ll have those same conversations with in the same settings. Nothing changes.

It is my assertion that this cycle of repetitive insanity is illogical and unreasonable. Look at the circumstances of this awareness. This epiphany arose from opening a fortune cookie. A fortune cookie purchased from a different restaurant than I usually go to, where I ordered different food than I normally order. This epiphany arose from doing something different.

Do something different, get something different. That was the wonderful epiphany I got. Since then, I have been trying to do something different every day. I encourage everyone to do the same. If you find yourself getting the same results, then perhaps you should change some of the things you are doing.