I’ve learned in my 20 years of existence that nothing I thought was important as a child really matters. The authority figures in your life — the teachers, the pastors, the coaches, the politicians- don’t really know what they’re talking about and anyone who claims to have the whole world figured out is either lying or delusional
I’ve always sat in the church pews on Sunday morning and listened to the guy on stage talk about morality, and the path to heaven, and the best way to live your life, and how to find meaning in what you do. When I was a child, I ate this shit up. I took notes like a good church boy and tried to implement these things in my life. I quickly realized though that anyone who claims to know “God’s plan” or the meaning of life is bullshitting you. These pastors that we put on stage are just nerdy, old men who spent half their life in seminary school studying biblical scriptures and dead languages. How can someone with no life experience tell me how to live MY life??
Experience is the most valuable currency. Stories and lived memories are priceless because they directly influence how much you know about the world and how much you know about yourself. We see these authors they make us read in school and quickly realize that what they write down is not the law. I mean, many of these European writers are just sickly men who got sent to Catholic school as boys and became bedridden so they write down things to make themselves feel better. But if you look at Hemingway, for example, he actually had life experience. He traveled all over the…
