I’m talking about those things that sort of slap you in the face (metaphorically speaking) about life and destroy your illusions about the way the world works, or otherwise kill your enthusiasm for life if you end up dwelling on them too much. For example (my list is somewhat gender biased toward males):
[ul]
[li] As soon as you are finished with school, you’re going to be working pretty much nonstop, probably until you’re in your 60s – unless you get arrested or killed or become homeless first. [/li][li] You’re probably never, ever going to drive a Ferrari/Lamborghini/ExoticWhatever, let alone own one.[/li][li] As you get older, things tend to break down in your body, and it’s much harder to keep in shape. Plus you don’t ahemrespond as well as you used to.[/li][li] You’re probably not going to finish writing that novel, let alone get it published.[/li][li] You’re probably not going to play pro sports.[/li][li] You’re not going to escape paying taxes…at least not for long.[/li][li] The taxes you do pay will go toward funding programs that mostly don’t affect you, are superfluous, or even morally reprehensible to you and are probably mismanaged and inefficient. And there’s almost nothing you can do about it.[/li][/ul]
One day you and all the people you love will be dead and there is nothing you can do about it. Worse yet, you’ll probably suffer a good deal amount of pain on the way.
You will never really own your house. Even if you pay the mortgage off, you’ll still have to pay property taxes, and if you don’t, the house can be taken away by the city/county and sold (unless you are over 65, poor, and your city/county offers tax relief for you under those circumstances).
Start all of the conservation and restoration associations that you want. Everything that you try to save will probably be destroyed in a nuclear war in the near future. Even if you manage to escape that fate, the universe will either go through a heat death or collapse into another Big Bang in a few billion years. Everything will be destroyed and there is nothing anyone can do about it.
expand into a near homogenous goo
collapse into a singularity of some ilk
neither of which posits a happy future for intelligence, or even for our species
(note for astronomers, my understanding may be wrong, it’s been a while since college and the exactitudes aren’t that important here)
Sidenote: I did once consider founding the Zeroth Church of Thermodynamics for Calvanist-style fundamentalists who didn’t find their own services depressing enough.
People will still try to hurt your feelings, even when you leave school. The only difference is that they now have experience in the matter.
No matter how many people love you, in a few hundred years you will be dust and your tombstone will look just like the weathered, unreadable lumps of rock that stand in the cemetery now.
If you are the person that thinks about the people that you love most of the time, then the people that you think of are the ones that rarely think of you.
It doesn’t matter what you do, any pain is bitter and lasting.
Think of all the resources (gas, electricity, water, food, etc.) it took just to get you to work today. Now think of what you accomplished at work, and know that it made very little difference, if any at all. Think of all the other people whose lives are just as meaningless as yours, and all the resources they waste in the process of carrying on their stupid lives. (This one doesn’t work for everyone, of course, but I whack myself with it frequently.)
Somewhere little kids or animals are being hurt and there’s not a damn thing you can do to stop it. It’s going to happen again and again.
You will never, in all probability, contribute anything of significance to humanity. You will not invent anything, write anything of notice, paint anything of value, or impact anyone’s life in a truly meaningful way.
You will probably die alone and miserable, wishing you had done it all differently.
Not a single person has your best interest at heart. Everyone is out to get what they can for themselves, by any means at their disposal, including, especially if they can, screwing you over completely. They will not hesitate to try, and if they succeed, they will do it as often as they can get away with it. This applies to your family, your friends, your employers, your co-workers, and especially entertainment industry managers.
You’re probably going to spend ten, twenty, or more years of your life working for a company that’d kill you and sell your organs if it got the CEO a third gold-plated bathtub for himself and his hookers.
All the stuff teachers tell you will really be important in the real world won’t be.
Sometimes…hell, usually…the assholes get away with it.
There are very few people you can actually trust. The only way you can find out who these people are is process of elimination, i.e. waiting until they break your trust.
The most important skill you can learn is kissing ass. It will carry you farther than all your years of education and life experience combined. You’ll get further in life sucking up than you will with a Ph.D.
You can be talented, well-trained, highly experienced, and a loyal employee and they’ll still ship your job overseas if it’ll let the CEO get more hookers on bath night. And they’ll probably make you train the guy taking your job.
[ul][li]You may never fall in love. Even if you do, that’s only temporary.[/li][li]Your life belongs (and always will) to the company you work for.[/li][li]You will probably die old and alone; the alternative is young and alone.[/li][li]In 100 years, you’ll be completely forgotten. Hell, it’s already starting.[/li][li]You are not in any way significant to anyone beyond the 10 people you know.[/li][li]Right now, you’re probably in the best shape you’re gonna be for the rest of your life – it’s all downhill from here, unless you’re a teenager. Then you get ~2 more years on the way up before the unavoidable slide down.[/li][li]All humanity’s accomplishments, everything we’ve done, all our great civilizations and advancements, our hopes and dreams – these are all consigned to the abyss. They will have no impact on this universe; they won’t even have a lasting impact on this little solar system.[/li][li]We are utterly alone in the void of space. There is no one out there who is going to come save us from ourselves.[/li]And a classic: “Life is pain, your Highness. Anyone who says differently is selling something.”[/ul]
The thieves, liars, and hypocrites almost invariably come out ahead in the short term, and usually in the long term as well.
From the dawn of humanity, our efforts to hold up the selfless and honest as role models have been inversely proportional to the actual material rewards earned by the greedy and mendacious.
