The contents of any human life - whether it is the life of the President of the United States or the life of some dude sitting on a street corner and asking for handouts - can be summed up as follows:
Got up.
Did shit.
Took a shit.
Went to bed.
Repeated.
Until death.
This will be your life, too, regardless of whether you become the President of the United States or end up sitting on a street corner and asking for handouts. From the beginning of your life until its timely or untimely end, you will only and always
Get up.
Do shit.
Take a shit.
Go to bed.
Repeat
Until you die.
That's it. This will be the framework of your life, and it will never change, not for one single day.
Sure, some of the details may change. "Do shit" can encompass a vast array of activities. "Do shit" runs the gamut from "laid in bed watching YouTube videos on my phone" to "served meals to 100 homeless people" to "made a million dollars gambling in the stripper-free Vegas known as Wall Street" to "did all three today."
Maybe the shit you do will make you famous.
Maybe the shit you do will make you wealthy beyond your wildest imagination.
Maybe the shit you do will garner you all manner of recognition.
That would undoubtedly be cool, and it may, for a time, cause you to lose sight of what you're actually doing, day in and day out.
But ultimately, you'll still be some late-stage simian doing the same thing every day. You'll
Get up.
Do shit.
Take a shit.
Go to bed.
Repeat
Until you die.
You may be thinking, "Isn't it the details that matter? Some shit matters more than others. Some shit is more fun or enriching to do. Some shit earns you oodles of awards and piles of cash. If I choose to do important, highly paid shit, won't that elevate my life? Won't that mean my life is more than just an endless cycle of shit?"
Nope.
First of all...
Believe it or not, these aren't the details that actually give your life meaning. Money, status, fame, awards are just ways to decorate the homely reality of life. These sorts of things won't matter much, maybe not even to you, 15 or 20 years down the road. They'll have been usurped by other equally fleeting particulars. If you don't believe me, ask Victor Fleming and Goodwin Knight. Who are they, you ask? My point exactly.
More important....much much much more important in fact...
When we're young, we're inclined (indeed, sometimes we're explicitly taught) that there's a right way to go about your life, that some ways of living are better or more preferable to others, that you should be doing X and that you're a failure if you don't pursue and achieve whatever X is. As a result, we spend a ridiculous amount of time feeling less than others and chasing goals that were never ours.
What I'm telling you is that's a mile-long turd.
Whatever shit you're doing, it's not the wrong way to live (as long as it's not harming yourself or others). You're not a failure if you're not jumping through the hoops society has demanded you hop through. You're not inferior if you're struggling to get by or superior if you've never once had to worry about where your next meal is coming from.
If you get up
If you do shit
If you take a shit
If you go to bed
And get up and do it all over again
Then you're doing what every single person on the planet is doing.
Living.
So, my dear friends, the next time you're inclined to compare your circumstance to someone else's, remind yourself of life's greatest, homely truth: no matter who that someone is, they're running on the same existential hamster wheel you are.
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