Step unto any subway platform and look around you.
What do you see?
You see normal people, leading normal lives, doing normal things, and dealing with normal problems.
What do I see?
I see average people, leading plain lives, doing regular things, and dealing with typical problems.
That’s because in society “normal” means all those things. It may not say so in the dictionary because it was written by normal people but it does say so in my dictionary, the one in my head. The reason “normal” means all those things is because those terms describe the vast majority of the population. These “normal” people either work 8 hour days 5 days a week or live off welfare, are either in debt or constantly going in and out of debt, wish for better things and a better life but never take consistent action to achieve it, and worst off all, they are content in living that way.
It’s this contentment that shocks me every time I talk about these things with “normal” people. For example, when i first started my office job, I’d often vent my frustrations to my fellow coworkers. I’d say things like:
“How can you just accept sitting here working 8 hours a day every single fuckin day for a measly 30-60k a year salary when some fat fuck like Rick Ross is wearing a watch worth at least 100k. That’s probably more than 3 times your yearly salary after you get raped by taxes that go towards unauthorized wars and welfare scammers. How can you accept working for chump change when other people not better or smarter than you in any way are living the life!”
Or this:
“Oh wait it’s not even 8 hours a day! It’s more like 12 hours if you add in the time between your alarm waking you up, getting ready for work, traveling to work, and later traveling home. OH WAIT and since we have a salaried position, when we have to stay overtime we don’t get payed any extra for that! So sometimes it’s like a 13-14 hour workday, and for what? A 2 day weekend that’s over before you know it. And then it begins all over again… and again… and again… and again… for 30-40+ years until retirement, if you’re lucky. It’s like a circle of hell with no escape. There’s no light at the end of the career tunnel, only a broken old man waiting to die.”
Or this:
” How does it feel that some filthy drug dealer out there makes more in 1 day than you do in a whole month. Is it fair? is it fair that an individual practicing an illegal craft is living the life while you toil away in your cubicle for scraps? Hey I guess at least they risk imprisonment, celebrities are even worse! You got absolutely untalented singers using auto tune and lip sync making bank while you rot in your cubicle cage, squeezed of your life force day by day, working to make your superiors richer while they party on a tropical island.”
And here are the 3 typical responses i receive:
1) A chuckle
2) A shrug
3) A smiling sarcastic response “you’re gonna show em, you the man”
These are the responses I get after a raw rant about how life is an unbalanced piece of shit and that we could and should fight for something better. It’s like what I’m saying is a fucking joke to “normal” people. I would have considered the idea that maybe some of these people actually want to live the “normal” life, but you and I both know that if anyone of these “normal” people were offered 5 million $$$ in exchange for never pursuing a career again, they’d take that money in half a heartbeat. This observation leads me to believe that “normal” people are content with their plain slave lives, knowing full well that without consistent action to actively shape their future they will never be free, or at least not soon enough to enjoy both freedom and youth.
It can be a subtle point for some so to elaborate: I’m not saying that an individual shouldn’t become say a music teacher because it won’t lead to financial freedom. I’m saying that the person should teach music on his/her own terms, not dependent on a salary for survival, because at the end of the day there’s a difference between simply surviving and truly living, even thriving.
“Normal” people like to fool themselves into thinking that they’re in control of their own lives when in reality they’re under the control of the corporation they work for and the economy of the country they live in. This is true because a “normal” person lives at the whim of his/her paycheck, literally living paycheck to paycheck. If the paycheck flow stops than a financial crisis immediately begins for that person. Savings can only last for so long when there’s bills to pay, mortgage to pay, food and transportation, etc…
This form of lifestyle shouldn’t be “normal” but it is, because the vast majority of the population lives like that. The only way to escape such a life is to be self sustainable, to attain financial freedom. How can I do this you may ask, well there are many ways ranging from business to crime(business), but the first step of the journey is always the same: Don’t be content. If up until now you have been, then now is the time to stop. This involves a shift in your MIND and if you successfully do it, and i mean REALLY do it, then congratulations, you are no longer “normal”. You have escaped “normality”, welcome to the minority and don’t look back 🙂
5 Comments
Ha ha you remind me of the thoughts I had racing threw my head before I quit my job. But remember words only showcase what you intend on doing. If your gonna talk the talk, you gotta be willing to walk the walk. (not to say that you haven’t put in any time and effort into being self sufficient) but some people (unlike me and you) don’t realize that though, lol.
Or they realize it but just don’t care for reasons i don’t understand.
With the music teacher thing you mentioned. Smooth McGroove on youtube was a private music teacher, not dependent on salary I think. Probably freelancing. He took it one step further, though, and thought of an original idea doing acapella video game music. Now he is famous and gets tons of adsense bucks from his videos. It’s all about building something with obsession.
“You take the blue pill, the story ends. You wake up in your bed and believe whatever you want to believe. You take the red pill, you stay in Wonderland, and I show you how deep the rabbit hole goes.”
BTW, how’s your journey going?