A drunken entry on the plane about life

Looks like the guy was drunk when he did this

Random Observation/Comment #221: 13-hour anything-rides are a pain in the ass – like literally, your ass may fall asleep and it may be painful.  Before the plane ride, I thought I had the best plan: Drink alcohol, get drunk, and fall asleep.  What I didn’t take into account was how quickly I get trashed while 15,000 ft in the air.  Gin and tonic was my toxin of choice, and after 5 glasses, I was very entertaining and a delight to be around (at least that’s how I felt).  After snoring and dozing off for 4 or 5 hours, however, I woke up with a sick feeling. It could have been the yogurt at dinner, or the alcohol itself, but the next 5 hours were the worst. The lady sitting next to me gave me dirty looks for making her get up to use the bathroom so much.  Never again – well, maybe on the ride back.

Note: This ridiculously long flight (where I was trashed half the time and sick the other half) still gave me time to write. I had written this in a drunken state, but I think it was interesting.  I, honestly, don’t even remember writing this.

Life doesn’t exist in phases: I think we just separate them that way when we’re younger to make things easier to understand. More important than the phases are the values that are learned while growing up.  Life seems to be mostly about how you think about life.  Pessimistic people will find bad things and optimistic people will expect and look for good things. Why not just see things for how they are and go with the flow?  Make sure your current situation is the best that it can be, and then plan ahead to make the situation even better.  Make sure you’re indulging in your joy and then spread that joy to those around you.

I found that “make yourself happy” is a fairly simple line of thought.  Of course, “I” does matter a lot, since I don’t think “I” is stupid enough to do harmful things to him, but continuously thinking about “I” would never advance a civilization.  It’s always been the bonds you form and the community you join that makes the world a better a place. I think I knew this when I first started traveling, but I didn’t really enforce it because I kept traveling and distancing myself from a community around me.  This blog was the only attempt I made to stay connected to a community I created for my own pleasure.

In many ways, my happiness was selfish: girls treated, not entirely as relationships, but as objects towards my own goals; degrees obtained to make money instead of help an advancing scientific world; hobbies existing as little side projects that pretty much only made me smile; tasting extravagant foods and wines/beers/spirits just so I could build my own opinion about them.  I wasn’t consciously making these decisions to obtain my own selfish goals, but I think I do owe many apologies for my previous actions that were sub-consciously made selfishly.  It is, however, this adjustment of character that should help me approach the world with more respect.

However, now that I know that this is the path I will take after I mature, I am wondering how quickly I should mature.  There are so many people out there who haven’t even begun to think about this, and I wonder if I should take advantage of the years I have to stay immature.  Of course, I will still have my values, but shouldn’t I be taking risks and exploring?  The only thing that floats in the back of my mind is the fact that those around me will benefit from my actions. If I didn’t grow up, my parents couldn’t retire and have fun. If I didn’t grow up, my friends wouldn’t be able to have the baller life-style in the city.

I suspect many people would tell me to worry about my own life before planning to meet the goals of others, but I think it’s fair to have other’s goal in mind if I love my friends and family.  Without them, my goals wouldn’t be worth having anyway.

~See Lemons Drunk and Mumbling