outliving the culture

"You spend your life fighting depression; it's the default human condition. The shit we buy, the people we hang around with, fuck and even love are just means to an end, a way to stave off the crushing loneliness that is to be alone and unloved.

"We buy into the idea of happiness as portrayed by the mass media, that happiness is found through social engagement, through the expenditure of the money we earn working for multi-millionaires that don't know us, don't care. If we live or die, we haven't made a mark on the world.

"We check Facebook compulsively, Twitter about our breakfasts and talk to our friends and coworkers about wild parties, prospective mates and expensive purchases: Attempts to show our sociability, our ability to fit in, our willingness to buy into this great corporate dream.

"If you want my advice, write something. Draw something. Tell someone something. Do something, ANYTHING, that will outlive this culture, that will transcend its boundaries and touch someone."

There is but one way I know of to outlive this culture, and that is to free yourself from this culture; do not let it shape you, do not let it affect you spiritually; do not let it define your soul's focus or path. You must rise above-- or transcend, as the anonymous writer exhorts --the ugliness that is this life. How do you do that? Choose for yourself who you are and what relevance you hold not only for yourself but for the world. Choose your legacy-- define it, quantify it, then build it. You can't escape the culture, but you can certainly outlive it.

In case you had forgotten, You are free. That's right, FREE. Now go out there and act like it. Go out and tell the world who you are. Don't let the world tell YOU who you are.