Never Forget

This week has been one enlightening week. I have relived moments from a decade or more ago and laid under the night sky, reminiscing with old friends about what was, what wasn’t and what could have been. Thinking back, we agreed that in our first twenty years of life, we achieved so much more than we had done in the last decade. Aged 18 or 19, we spent summer days on grassy hills, looking up at the sky and talking about the things we thought were important at the time – namely our dreams and our relationships, or lack thereof. The future was miles away; we had no responsibilities, no dependants, no ties, and no real worries. Our biggest worry (If you could call it that) was whether we were going to meet someone and fall in love or whether that person we fancied was ever going to fancy us back. University was the next logical step in our lives and at no point did it enter our minds that one day we would look back and wonder what the hell happened.

Well I’m asking it now: Just what the hell happened?

Nowadays people just can’t be arsed to get up, go out and DO things together anymore. They wait for YOU to contact THEM. They cry off things because it’s too far, too expensive or because they just can’t be bothered. What happened to the spark of youth, the willingness to go out whenever you were asked and wherever you fancied? What stopped us from being those same people we were a decade ago? We’ve all been guilty of this at some point. If you deny that then I call you a damned liar.

Each of us took different paths. Some finished Uni; some didn’t. Some moved away; some didn’t. One thing we all succumbed to was not making the effort to stay in touch with one another and continuing to meet regularly. My dream when I was 18 was not being tied down to one particularly dirty shit-hole of a street and making a career of being told what to do day in and day out by other people who don’t know me, don’t know who I am or what I want to be and don’t even care about that besides.

What happened about working for me and my dreams? What happened about doing what needed to be done in order to achieve the things I wanted to achieve? You get ground down, slowly and inexorably by the things that other people dictate to you are the right ways to live your life. You fall into the steady, plodding routine of working yourself to the bone day after relentless day for something or someone that is NOT your brainchild, NOT necessarily something you believe in and usually NOT something that is rewarding for you on an emotional, financial, physical or even spiritual level. Why? Why do we do this?

Because this is what we are told our lives must be like, that’s why. We’re told we must work for society practically every day of our adult lives, not in order to live comfortably, but to better the organisation or person that you work for. If you own or run that organisation or work for yourself then you are in the right place to be able to try and achieve your early goals. If you don’t, then you are simply working for someone or something else. If you’re happy with that then good for you, enjoy it. I don’t enjoy it. I refuse to salute and celebrate my own mediocrity and I will be damned if I put up with it any longer than I have to. Things have to change, not because I am having a “crisis”, not because I am a “rebel” or a non-conformist, but because this is not who I am.

Who I am has never changed. Who I am was obvious and known to me ever since I was a teenager. I am not blind to the difficulties inherent in making the changes that I want to make, but I am not about to let those obstacles prevent me from doing what I need to be done. It won’t happen overnight; it won’t happen within the next few months even, but my goals are clear to me now and I know what I must do to work towards them.

And I will achieve them. I fucking will.