I’ve wasted my youth. Pissed it away on drinking, partying, video games, TV, and other forms of time wastes. I’ve consumed the only precious thing I’ve been given, time. Spent it on worthless pursuits, if you want to even call them pursuits, complicit with the system in every imaginable way.
You wake up one day to find yourself fragile, finally realizing what all those old people were telling you when you were young. The realization that when you reach a certain age, you are incapable of recovering the time you’ve pissed away. And now you most certainly are destructible; recklessness is all of the sudden frowned upon, unlike the days of a teen. Being set on a path of self destruction usually leads to just that, although at the moment when that realization hits, you’re not ready to fly over the edge.
But the real enigma is what could’ve been, what is the line between wasting time and spending time wisely?
It’s probably a safe bet that we, as comfortable living westerners, waste most of our time inventing excitement and manufacturing “experiences.” Unless you’re in a real struggle to survive, which these days means making enough money to pay bills and eat, then escape is the only outlet to combat boredom. Think about it, you have a decent job that pays at least OK, you have a roof over your head, plenty of food that you’ll never ever have to worry about acquiring (at least not in the foreseeable future), and an unending appetite for something more. What that something more is is intangible, can’t be defined, and is most likely the result of having every basic need taken care of and then some. A void, I suppose, that needs to be filled.
If I had it to do over again, I’d make different choices. Who wouldn’t? Not to avoid mistakes, but to involve myself in more interesting pursuits, other than just shrugging them off and going out to party with my stupid friends. Now it’s too late to recoup that lost time, but not too late to reinvent and begin something worthwhile.