Nothing many of us are doing these days makes any sense plus there’s no real purpose to much that we’re spending time doing- time that we’ll never ever get back.
Those home runs we think we might have scored? They are fleeting moments and have zero sustainability in these TikTok times.
There, I’ve said it.
Nothing has been making sense for a very long time, and this can’t also be blamed on the pandemic or post pandemic fatigue.
This is just my personal observation, but I believe that somewhere along the road to somewhere, we took a detour and ended up on the road to nowhere.
We knew it and just kept going and going and going though we were moving and continuing to back up in Reverse.
Speaking for and about myself, I somehow numbed a few home truths from getting through to me and lost myself in frivolous clutter.
Like what? Like not admitting to myself when I was really, truly and genuinely wildly happy- and why and with whom.
Instead it was wallowing in and losing precious time romanticising about a time that had come and gone- a time that initially happened for all the right reasons and ended because I wanted to end it and stop being a man child looking for mother. So I detonated that bridge.
Falling in love with the idea of romance and staying there after Happily Ever After has gone can have you trapped in the Ya Ya’s forever. That is until the penny, or the other shoe drops and you finally say, “Wait, this isn’t working”.
Casually watching a movie recently that I had never heard of before called “The Five Year Engagement” stopped me in my tracks, drew me in and made me think.
There was one particular scene where someone really smacks someone else with huge bolts of truth.
This really hit heart, head and home and made me think about many things I had not wanted to admit and face- or say. But it was okay for me to be a punching bag and remain quiet. That’s never okay.
I look around today, and apart from clicking “likes” and “shares” and speaking emoji while uploading and posting more than a serial wannabe postman on crack, we often allow some real negative vibes into our lives, man.
We do this by getting involved in things that offer us absolutely no return on our investment in time.
Many of us, starting with me, are leading what I call “lost lives”.
As I keep telling people who ask me these days about marketing and wanting to know about who their customers are, a good starting point is understanding that we’re all now 23 years older than we were in 2000.
Let THAT sink in.
Being twenty years older than I was twenty years ago and carrying around old baggage and knowledge could be dangerous travel companions, because things and people are looking very different today.
Again, personally speaking, unlike twenty years ago, I have questions about many who, once upon a time, I thought were made of sterner stuff, those being given leadership roles but who fall apart when there are bumps along the way, and others with a “voice” they don’t use.
I am seeing many untruths either being accepted because they’re considered par for the course or brushed under the carpet to keep the peace and keep up pretences.
My problem- and gawd knows I have many- is that all this singing to just “let it be” never leads anywhere.
It’s being subservient and placid and rolling in the deep and rolling over to let others walk all over you.
Me, I stand up and stand my ground to that- and with words as I am a writer. I wouldn’t use emojis. And this is what I am getting at.
We each came into this world with very different skill sets and mindsets.
We are no longer who we were and now that we’re who we are, we need to make ourselves heard and known.
Posting where I am or what I am doing on Facebook or Instagram is fine once in a while. But what is this saying and how did we get to the point of posting happy snaps and scrolling and scrolling and streaming down the river?
If this is progress and if this is what technology has wrought on us, it’s also dulled our abilities to imagine, create, go with what our heart says and not follow that herd instinct.
Herd instinct robs us of our personalities and turns us into dullards with way too much time on our hands.
We unwittingly have become prisoners of our own devices- but these devices belong to someone else who reaps the rewards of what we sow.
It’s a flawed and cracked personal business model and self inventory that’s bloody useless to anyone.
Surely, Shirley, it’s now about swimming against the current, taking back what’s legally ours and raging against the machine so hard that it falls apart and becomes the clutter that it has always been.
This just might help us win back our hearts and minds- and dignity- and give us the powers to reason and the keys to break free from everything that’s been holding us back.
