Pool lessons

[Zues126]

I've been watching the show "This Is Us" with my mom. For anyone that hasn't seen it it's a real tear jerker. I don't know that I've seen anything that evokes more heartache. And at the center of it all is this family and how the husband dies while the kids are still young. The show flashes forward and back during different times of their lives and it is just this gut wrenching tragic loss that has monumentally impacted and shaped all of their lives. The mother who is widowed after his death eventually remarries but on the anniversary of her first husband's death she spends the day by herself and allows herself to re-experience the grief of this loss. It's clear that she was able to keep living and continue to find some joy in the world in the second part of her life, but it's equally clear that the pain is something that she'll always have to bear.

What's strange about it is that my XW chose this. The same loss that this grief stricken woman would've given anything to avoid, and my XW chose this. And I'm not alone. I'm sharing this because you are all here with me. It's incomprehensible to me. I don't think I'll ever understand it and while some part of my brain still tries to in an effort of absolute closure I am kind of glad I can't.

The other part of the show I find funny is it's humorous attempt to show a 'real gritty' marriage. Back in the early sitcom days shows like Leave it to Beaver showed outdated but very unrealistically perfect family life. Now a days shows are still doing that, but instead of showing a perfect family life with no tension, they try to show difficult tension but then the characters somehow work through it all. For example, the husband is an alcoholic, and he hides it from his wife, and when she finds out he stays on his friend's couch for a few days...but then they reconnect, she says if it's his problem then it's their problem and she's there with him, and he starts going to meetings and gets sober. The whole time he is dad of the year. There are other examples but I find it hysterical. These shows still portray Disney marriages, but now they have evolved to PG13 version to make them seem more realistic. I call BS. Realistic would've been her filing divorce, or him cheating on her with an understanding coworker, or his drinking escalating and him never seeing the children and her changing the locks and deciding to wrench full custody of the kids with a trumped up abuse charge. I guess audiences vote with their remote control and people still want fantasy.

I think it's human nature to be entitled. I told my friend the other day that I am put off by the idea of making your passions into your career. Now, I'm not saying there's anything wrong with it per se. If you can contribute to your community the most by using the gifts you are given, and simultaneously feel rewarded by success and the satisfaction of doing something well that you enjoy, great. It is when it becomes self serving that I get a bad taste in my mouth.

We are the generation where it's glamorized to find a job where you can just do what makes you happy all the time. Like someone that wants to be a life coach, so they wake up, do their yoga, hop over to the coffee shop to have a cappuccino while updating their blog, throwing an inspirational quote on their website, then going to some swank office so they can smugly advise their clients how they too can follow their passions and find the same enlightened way of living that they have.

The problem with this is it doesn't scale. If everyone followed their passion it wouldn't work. Streets need to get tarred, garbage trucks need to be driven, phones need to be answered. 7 billion people on this planet can't just pursue their passions and the world still turn. And until we reach the utopia where AI has solved everything and we can all write poetry about how painful our trouble free lives are, people that are pursuing their passions are doing so on the slave labor of the rest of society that doing whatever they need to in order to get by. They may feel like they earned their lifestyle by working hard and out competing others, but in many cases they are extremely privileged and fortunate to be the right person at the right time.

Again, I'm all about manifesting your potential, being successful, and enjoying that success. I think is should be the goal to contribute as much as possible with your gifts and then enjoy the rewards that brings, not to make your goal achieving the most rewards possible for yourself.

This is parallel to the entitlement I see in how people view relationships. People no longer work for one employer and get a gold watch retirement because they believe they are looking for the job with the ping pong table in the break room that wants them to sit in bean bag chairs to inspire creativity, and similarly people aren't ready to give up on the idea of that This is Us Marriage. The Life Coach Marriage. No one's ready to take the garbage truck marriage.

I'm a garbage truck quality guy. And most women are answering the phone quality women, only worse because they are looking for life coach lives. This is why things look like they break down.

I don't think this is a problem exactly in the sense that someone is doing something wrong, or that there's a solution. Just seems like human nature. Just posting a few of my thoughts. I don't talk about this stuff with anyone else so I'll just inflict it on you all.

Otherwise all is still going reasonably well, nothing so horrible it's stopping me from enjoying myself. I'll update more on everything else another day, take care and have a good weekend!