Spending money on another man's wife. Not nearly as bad as it sounds.

I don't know how many of you guys ever had more experienced, 'wiser' adults tell you to avoid spending a lot of money on girls, but I got told this a lot, especially throughout high school. From my experience that seems to be one of the most common pieces of relationship advice I've received. The logic behind this is that most likely you will not end up marrying this person, and not much will come out of it. After thinking this through probably a little too much, I decided that this idea is bad. Kind of.
Story time. Once upon a time, this guy was very infatuated with a girl. Both were in high school. Logically speaking, and from an outsider's perspective, this "relationship" was doomed from the start. Unfortunately being "in love" isn't very logical. These two lovebirds did their thing, including dismissing much of the advice given to them by others who were more experienced, choosing to make mistakes and learn lessons on their own. The guy had been given the classic "don't spend your money on another man's wife" advice, but to a degree, he chose to ignore it. He had dumb friends, and one of them had recently spent $300 on his girlfriend for Valentine's Day when all she wanted was to watch a movie and have a picnic. Learning from his friends' mistake, he thought things through, but he still spent more money on this girl than was advised. Sure enough the day came when things didn't go ideally, and the two parted ways. Now a carefree bachelor once more, he thought about what had happened, what he could learn, what he regretted, etc. Fortunately he realized spending money on this girl was not a regret. Except for that adorable stuffed giraffe. Courtney if you're reading this, I want it back.

As you probably figured out, this guy was me. Thinking about all the money I spent on that girl I realized that if I would have saved it all, I would have accrued a considerable amount. Or I would have spent most of it on fast food or something. The point is, they say to not spend money "on another man's wife" because most likely your high school relationships wont go too far. If yours did, I salute you, but the majority of us... Thinking about all the green Jackson's I spent on this girl I wondered if I had wasted my money. I came to the conclusion that no, I did not, and here is why.

Much like the higher education system, you pay for something, but you don't really get anything specific back. You get a little piece of paper that symbolizes your achievements, but if you think about it, you don't really get anything back. If I go to McDonald's, or a gas station, you pay for something tangible. You get to decide what to do with your cheeseburger or gallon of gas, but either way it's yours. You bought it, you can touch it, see it, smell it, etc. Experience doesn't work like that. When you pay for college, you get a piece of paper that helps you make more money, but that is if you're doing it wrong. College is supposed to be about the journey to the diploma, you're supposed to be learning things that will help you be a more educated and useful member of society. But no one hands you a bucket labeled "Knowledge". The things you hypothetically learned aren't tangible, but they are still there. This post is getting kind of long. What I'm trying to say is that as long as you don't go overboard, when you spend money on a relationship that doesn't go anywhere, it's not wasted. Hopefully you learned a thing or two, and hopefully you will be able to use that in the future. Also hopefully the other person remembers that. In this society it's rather hard to leave a relationship and have the other person not think you're a total monster. Last but not least, if you made the other person happy, even for a moment, you wasted nothing. "The best portion of a good man's life is his little, nameless, unremembered acts of kindness and love" -William Wordsworth

"Remember. You're always living the dream"

A guy I know that is in an interestingly tricky situation at a seemingly critical point of his life said something to me that not only shocked me, but it made me think. This guy recently became a homeless couch hopper, living off of a duffel bag or two for several months now. He is dead broke, always hungry, looking for ways to make his future a little brighter, but it seems like many things are stacked against his favor. He hasn’t hit rock bottom, but he is a little lower than most of us hope to ever be. Now that you know a little context, you can understand why what he said is so shocking. As a parting goodbye, he said “Remember. You’re always living the dream.” As he was walking away I wondered how someone in his position and his misfortune could say that he, as well as the rest of us, are living the dream. Always. No matter what happens. As I continued pondering this concept, I realized that the dream is a dream because we don’t have it yet. We are always living the dream as long as we have a goal we are working towards. Living the dream doesn’t consist of having the things you need and want and having a mostly problem free life, living the dream means working towards something and achieving it. If I am homeless and my goal and dream is to be completely financially stable and independent and I achieve that, I am living the dream. If I am already well off, but my dream is to start a successful hotel, that is just as valid as the first one. With this train of thought I decided that having ‘a life goal’ is stupid. All of us ought to endeavour for more than just a single life goal. A life goal of mine is to circumnavigate the globe, but as soon as I achieve that I will have another goal and I have other goals on my way to that one. Being a productive, industrious member of society, bring a smile to someone everyday, better myself morally, all these are things I can strive towards my entire life. If I work towards these goals, I am living the dream. Because when I am circumnavigating the globe, you can bet that I will be at least a little stressed and worried. I probably won’t be thinking the entire time ‘gee, this is really living the dream. This is the greatest thing of my life!’ There will definitely be moments when we can stop and appreciate how good things are, and we should do that often, but life isn’t a movie. You can’t listen to a catchy song as you’re achieving your goal, mostly because the average song length is 3 minutes and 30 seconds. You probably should make a playlist. Or you can film it and make a video montage. I guess then your dream can be like a movie when you watch it, but while you’re living it, live it! For the good and the bad! Living the dream is working towards a dream and enjoying the brief moment of victory when you do achieve it. “Remember. You’re always living the dream.”

Rain Rain Go Away

Rain makes everything seem clean. The smell of rain is one of the most satisfying smells in the world, whether it’s on concrete, in the forest, or anywhere in between. You hear many people say that they love the rain, and a few that hate it. It’s understandable when people live somewhere where it rains all the time, but with the exception of those people, I feel like most people enjoy rain in some way. One of my favorite sights is a city, with all its bustling energy and light, coated with shimmering raindrops at night. But at the same time, the sun is proven to make people happier. Lots of dopamine and whatnot. When you have too much rain, you can get the ‘bad weather blues’. How is it that rain seems like would make people sad, and depressed, when small quantities of it make people happy? In reality, not one thing can make people happy forever. The hedonistic treadmill is the idea that not one sustained activity will make a normal person euphorically happy or chronically sad forever. The hedonistic treadmill explains that “ the observed tendency of humans is to quickly return to a relatively stable level of happiness despite major positive or negative events or life changes.” - wiki. Really what sustains happiness is variety. Think about if you ate your favorite food every other day for 3 months. You would soon choose a new favorite and the old meal would lose it’s novelty. I experienced this recently, I started going to this sandwich shop a lot, and after trying all of the menu, I chose my favorite sandwich. I proceeded to eat that same sandwich every time I went, for about 5-6 months. It was really great for a long time, but eventually, something inside me snapped and I don’t ever eat that sandwich anymore. Change is the only constant, or at least that’s the way it should be. For better or worse, eventually you will end up on “a relatively stable level of happiness” no matter what. This is silver lining at it’s finest. And on every rain cloud, no matter what it is, there is a silver lining if you look for it, but at the same time, I like the rain. Or I guess I should say the variety rain brings, the freshness of a rainstorm, if everyday is a sunny day, you inevitably get bored. “Life isn’t about waiting for the storm to pass, it’s about learning to dance in the rain” -Vivian Greene

Snapchat Sob Stories, Tasteless Tumblr Talk, Facebook Feuds, and Twitter Tantrums

Alright, to start off, this is an opinion. So take it or leave it, it's your choice. Just because you may hate my opinion doesn’t mean it’ll change or I’ll even care about your hatred. You have been warned.

We all have new iPhones but no one to call (that's a loose quote from Life’s for the Living by Passenger). Why is that? In this age of connectivity, this age of global networks, easy access to anyone anywhere, it seems like we are further from people than ever before. As a younger generation, we learn at an earlier and earlier age how to text, Snapchat, Facebook, etcetera etcetera… but the more friends we seem to have, the less friends we feel like we have. I've also noticed that a lot of people prefer texting to talking in person or on the phone. I know I prefer texting to phone calls, and recently I realized that my skills of talking in person seem like they’re declining in quality. Because of technology, I am used to being able to take more time to think about what I’m going to say so my ‘conversational response time’ is getting worse and when I do manage to open my mouth, what I say isn’t as well thought out as it would otherwise be over text or something of that nature. I feel like this is a pretty common phenomenon throughout my generation. Another common phenomenon in this generations is what I like to call “Snapchat Sob Story”. This is very common on all modes of social media, but I first noticed it on snapchat thus the name (also, I’m sure I’m not the only one to think of this catchy name but I didn’t bother googling it to see if it’s patented. So don’t sue me please). This phenomenon is, for example on their snapchat story, the perpetrator would write something along the lines of “I hate feeling like this” or “All alone tonight again. :’(“ or even a public post meant for specifically one person such as “I guess that’s the way it’s gonna be then. F u.” This is a perfect example of people using social media in all the wrong ways. This is a perfect example of how distant social media has actually made us through all this connectivity. These people clearly want to talk about their problems, they want attention. Who doesn’t? Everyone wants to be able to vent to someone and feel like they have someone who will listen. But these people are doing it all wrong. Most of us honestly don't care. I mean that in the most loving way possible. We want to care, if this person came to us (even over snapchat) and asked to talk about something that they have been struggling with or how they have been having a hard time recently, more than likely we will listen, but we will be a little confused. Not only that, but these two people will have bonded and become much closer. This bond may be temporary or permanent, it depends on what either person does following this experience. The reason we don't do this when someone puts up a snapchat sob story is because that is just like rewarding a dog for bad behavior. The crowd doesn’t care about individuals. Individuals care about individuals. So yelling problems out to the crowd is stupid. People recognize that as a desperate cry for attention, a public pity party so to speak, so we don't join in. The ability to throw personal things out to the world like that is one of the reasons social media really doesn’t bring people closer. You can’t make a personal connection with everyone and certainly not a strong connection over technology. There is some sort of bond making magic of talking in person and eye contact. If you are one of the ‘perps’ that does this, you can either hate me for pointing out things you’re doing very wrong when you clearly are at an already low point, or you can stop doing what you’ve been doing and start doing something better. Go make some friends, talk about your feelings if that’s what you want, and stop hiding behind a keyboard. “If you always do what you've always done, you're always going to get what you've always got.” -Henry Ford.