Just off the Conveyor Belt.....

There is no point living if you don't feel alive.... Mr C

Alternative living? I cannot imagine another way, though I feel that should be the option. I got off the conveyor belt a couple of years ago.Still don't have a definite stand on if or not this is was what I imagined it will be.

School (on the conveyor belt) was fun. As we moved from one grade to the other, the expectations changed. Boys had some very silly ideas of life (which we quantified as fun). We moved from:

• Learning to walk,
• to fighting & bullying the weakling
• Climbing trees
  
• hating girls and those suckers who walk with girls (and think they are their girlfriends),
• Peeping at girls in their changing rooms,
• trying to understand your body parts and how it relates to a woman,
  
• First kiss,
• Stealing dads car for a party,
• Sports,
• Drugs & narcotics & Alcohol
  
• First sex (That was the only real intimate experience for most; afterwards it was just assisted ejaculation)
  
• First heartbreak,
• Joining and leaving groups
  
• Searching for money (in the wrongest of places)
• Depression???
  

We later learnt of concepts like scarcity and stability. And we thought that was cool. Build an environment where I can screw if I want, eat & sleep when I want. "I could get used to this".
Then we realized concepts like scarcity & stability. We defined our environment and decided this is how we want to live our lives. As we are getting used to that we found ourselves in the real world. Balancing all vices, desires and wants within a budget within an every changing environment; all charged at real world prices.
Maybe life would have been better if our society had not evolved to require complex mental survival skills. Life might have been better in the garden of Eden.But coming to think of it, I might never have dated girls non-Yoruba girls..... All long that walk would get me tired. It means my scope would been limited to just Ijebu girls.
But our society did evolve into this system we find ourselves; the real world. the environment where chaos, oppression, globalisation and wars are organised for personal benefit (in contrast to the ideologies handed out in schools).
You realize the mess and oh! shit you have to sort yourself out. Device a plan:

1. Join the rate race
2. Get a job and device a retirement plan
   
3. Get a place to stay.
4. Join your boys every weekend to party and celebrate the fact that there is still air to breathe
   
5. Attend wedding every weekend and hear your friend complain about how long it is taking you to get married.
   
6. Get a stable girl & marry her after two years of dating.
7. Start attending more religious functions
   
8. Hate your job but cannot leave (financial commitments are unbearable)
   
9. Attend 1st year birthday parties for kids of your friends(where your friends complain about how long it is taking you to get a child)
   
10. Get a child.
11. He/she gets to walk and engaged in those mindless fun you were involved in
12. Accept the child's progress as yours
13. Start attending the weddings of your friends children (where you friend do their God given right to advice you on why you poor child is taking too long in picking a wife)
    
14. Your poor confused child get married and joins the race
15. Start attending burials of your friends (where your friends complain about how long it is taking you to die)
16. Get very religious
    
17. Die
    

The same plan everyone else is making. Slight modification like you marry Mary, why your friend marry Fatima.

There is something so systematic about present life format. Lack of lifestyle creativity, coupled with people falling into stereotype in the quest to survive reflect how much of life is lost just living. I believe life is about experiencing and using that to shape the future for the youth unborn. Without these experiences, it becomes a meaningless struggle and race for survival.

Just something to note as you get off the belt:

• Know that all you learnt before does not prepare you for what you are going to face; all you were thought was how you can be useful to everyone else but yourself
  
• Expect no soft landing
• Try articulate all experiences; someone out there might find it useful
• Teach
• Don't hold anything from yourself; as long as you are sure the benefit out weighs the cost
• Make use of every opportunity you have to do something good
  

In simple terms, enjoy every moment in life! It might be your last. And you could have changed the planet for someone by that action.