What if money were no object?
Please watch this video before continuing.
What do you desire? / If Money were no Object - Alan Watts
Our whole education paradigm is based solely on achieving certain goals. Goals set-out by a monkey to make sure the world can climb trees real good. If you can't monkey real good and get a qualification well you might make a good banana. The whole school system resembles a prison, everyone in uniform, people divided by their 'intelligence' and if you think creatively or outside the box, get back in that box (even Art in schools is taught not to create but to replicate things exactly as we see it). Sorry if this comes across as some sort of anarchist steez, it's not.
So we're born into a system of skewed values of success. A high-end job, beautiful partners, lots of money, kids etc. and if you don't achieve these successes, you're a failure.
What is success? Success is happiness.
What is failure? Failure is not so happiness.
Create your own values on what is successful and what is not and you can be as successful as you want.
So these values have been integrated into our society, a long time now actually, and have been so detrimental to our own mental health. This pressure to have lots of money, or comparing yourself to others on social media does absolutely nothing for your self-esteem. The world we have built in is vicious and while the aforementioned monkeys are swinging from branch to branch, there's useless little bananas without mad qualifications going all brown and vile and squidgy and jesus I hate rotten bananas. (Put out of date bananas in bags of rice and they become ripe again, prolly not worth the effort but)
This video is definitely a metaphor and not just a cool life hack.
So now, just after a recession where there has been very little money or any 'success' and there is an absolute epidemic of depression, the Irish government decided the only way to save money and the people in the country was to make cut-backs on mental health (one of the only modern countries to do such a thing, thankfully now they're trying to make changes).
So yeah there's a crazy disease going around killing a lot people, not like swine-flu but just as physically debilitating. Gonna have to back this up actually to be fair.
Bressie - 'Depression is the epidemic of this generation'
Personally I believe the depression epidemic is completely controllable to an extent. I feel people learn to succeed in the way they are taught In school and not taught the core values of existence. Not only should we be taught how to be creative, but how to look after ourselves. The CBT modules should be taught at an early age, integrating meditation, mindfulness, general mental health awareness. If religion is your thing fair enough, but I'm sure your god would be happier to abolish religion as a subject and teach kids real life ambitions of how to be happy. Teach us how the only thing we're obliged to do is exist, and if you're going to exist you might as well be happy.
No water charges here boyyyy, shout out to the National Geographic
Find your passion, be it blindfolding guide-dogs or making daisy chains for old ladies, find you gift or passion and follow it. The money may or may not come but you will find happiness. Your only meaning of life.
You teach us how money does not matter and you will have a world of happy human beings.
“The meaning of life is to find your gift. The purpose of life is to give it away.”
― Pablo Picasso