Move

This here’s a bit of a shout at any youngsters who have the privilege of living in a free country that isn’t an active war zone.

As you mature, you may start to suspect things that make it difficult to accept where you are. That your teachers and elders don’t know shit and yet are completely full of it. That the particular culture where you were born does not have all the answers; or, more commonly, that the answers it has are really terrible. That the people around you suck. That your friends, relatives, acquaintances, and authority figures are shitty people who treat others like garbage.

If you start to suspect these things, I am here to tell you that you really need to trust your instincts.

This is not to say that the world isn’t filled with many wonderful places and people. It is. Perhaps you are in such a place, surrounded by such people, and your feelings are simple adolescent restlessness and petulance. But the world is also filled with vast swathes of dreary shit-heaps filled with entire human landscapes of miserable cunts.

The thing is, there’s no way to know which environment you’ve been raised in unless you get out and about in the world a bit and experience some different cultures and people. So do yourself a favor and see as much of the world as you can as soon as you can.

At this point, so many people, born losers all, are going to be saying: “yeah, but I don’t have the money for that.”

I’m not here to tell you that your obstacles are not real, but I also am not talking about some kind of three-month, European sex adventure (although if you can swing that, it sounds awesome and you should totally do it).

Start small. Take a weekend and go and visit your cousin in the next town over. See if people are any less shitty there. Couch surf your way to some city you always thought sounded cool. Check it out! Stuck in a shitty dead-end job in an awful town? Well, don’t they have shitty dead-end jobs in nicer places too?

The whole fucking world is out there, is all I’m saying. Don’t you dare nail your feet down to the floor of the joint you were spawned in and then start whinging that you never had another choice.

If you can’t stand your situation and environment, be a nomad for a little bit. Unplug yourself from what you’ve become familiar with and try something else out. Find a situation and environment better suited to you. I guarantee they are out there somewhere.

And if you don’t really mind where you are and who you’re with, then consider yourself lucky and do what you will. But even so, no one has ever done themselves a disservice by expanding their horizons a bit.

For fuck sakes, know this: just because you were born someplace, doesn’t mean you have to end your days there. We aren’t trees.