Get Over It and Yourself!

This picture of a little tree had a profound impact on me when I saw it.

Dame Nature doing her thing, survival where none seems possible, all the elements of real drama and the struggle for life in the fact that that a little tree grew from the remains of another.

 

I look around our planet in the thoughtful manner that is the prerogative of the seriously over the hill gang that I now find myself in.   To younger people we 'old folk' are virtually invisible as they rush to their mirrors, telephones in hand to take yet another selfie.

 

 I must confess, now,  that I really don't get selfies, or pictures of your food and cups of coffee.   I don't get the desperation to be seen in every available location duck pouting with companions to convince followers that you are having a good time, or are the trying to convince yourselves?

 

We've all done it.  Back in my day, via conversation, we would blag and brag about the  fantastic times that we weren't really having.    Now, with the advent of social media this has become epidemic and has reach a level the madness of which has never been know.

 

I see endless cups, plates and pouts and wonder what the point is, I get that we like to put on a happy front, but really, who amongst us is truly happy with their lot?     Actually I am, but not entirely, and it has taken almost seventy years to reach my state of personal bliss.

 

One of the few human truths is that none of us knows what is happening in the lives of other, we cannot read minds and, for so many people these days, life is extraordinarily hard as they judge themselves negatively in comparison with the filtered images of their idols who look nothing like their alter egos in real life.

 

  Real life remains a constant reminder to media jockeys that they aren't thin enough, tall enough, or simply too much of what is not trending at the moment.   I see all these little sheep like girls desperately trying to clone themselves into look alikes of their heroines as they contour their faces, adding bizarre white spots to their noses where Rudolph's was red. They also plump up their lips and wear what looks remarkably like insulation tape placed a la Groucho Marx on their brows. And let me tell you girlies, most of your boys do not like the look, other than the over groomed boys that silently attach themselves to such super women.

 

  Fake will always be fake, my blue streak is blue as a testament to fakery, while my hair is almost white now which testifies to my age.    I recently got slammed by someone on Instagram who took offence at my invited comment to an Instagram post of  two tiny girls dressed to look like Kardashians, they looked awful, to me.    My critic then proceeded to tell me that when compared to their shit, my face was much worse.   My reply was simply that at seventy its supposed to look like this!   I cannot and will not apologise for being old, it is now my role on the slippery slope to my death.   I will also not apologise for having an opinion but I cannot forgive the stupidity of someone not comparing like for like.   I pointed out that if I were my critic I would be alarmed that such a venomous reaction was generated by a simple comment made by a septuagenarian, a stranger who has the right not to like something.  

 

   Such a mordant and visceral response to the trivia of modern life is what concerns me for your futures.   So much of modern life seems to be about obsessive and seriously compulsive narcissism  that leads to puerile terms such as 'influencer' 'creative'.   We all influence the people in our lives and most of us have a streak of creativity, indeed I have influenced people and can be quite creative, but I don't for one minute imagine that I am in a league set apart from the mere mortals because I can do either.   Such is the arrogance of some nonentity 'celebrities' that I recently heard one refer to herself in the third person as she entered a room.   The fact that she has nominal celebrity means not one jot to me, and I fear such arrogance will undermine the balance of one or many lives in due course.

 

  The point is that we much continue to have an occasional reality check.   As those of you who know me are aware, I work at the sticky end of life, down among the dead folk.   I speak for them, tell their truth and say fuck and bollocks in chapels all over the place if they did, because that is who they are and I am not so prissy that I cannot use real words.   It actually amuses me to occasionally 'explete' like a trooper in the course of my work and the notion of being paid to amuses the fuck out of me!

 

From now on I think I will go into 'Get over it' mode when I blog, I see so much from this old vantage point that I would like to enlighten you all with the sheer inanity of thinking too much of yourself, because sooner or later you'll be the one in the box that I am attending to and I would like to be able to say good things about your rather than telling lies.  

 

So, please, remember to be real sometimes, life is never going to fab and wonderful for all of your life.   Learn from the shitty episodes and when your time comes someone like me will be happy to attend to your final reckoning.

 

I'm still loving this thing called, my life, please love yours enough to make sense of it, because at the end of the day, none of us will be here forever.    So try to do some good at some point in your day, it may be remembered and become part of your eulogy.