Meditation for June 4th, 2016
You Don’t Know How To Do Anything
There was this time where people knew how to do things. Grandpas all over the country used to be able to fix anything. People knew how to fix their own cars and fix their own houses, but now people either pay professionals or just work their way around the broken thing.
“You just have to press down and hold it for it to work.”
The old people talk about this time where America was great, and in some ways they are right, but mostly they’re full of shit, back then really sucked. In the way they are right is that people knew how to do things and now people are incapable of doing things.
Here is a list of things you don’t know how to do:
Social situations
First Impressions
Yes, that is right, how to make a great impression on people you are meeting for the first time. This could be a friend of a friend, a possible date or a possible boss or a potential customer, but making a first impression goes a long way in making sure you get in everyone you encounter’s good graces.
You don’t do this because you’re you. You’re so special that they just should accept you as you and if they don’t like it, they can fuck off, right? It’s actually because you’re scared and this is something you don’t know how to do.
Persuading Others
How do you persuade someone you are right or that your opinion should be considered? By using techniques that are tried and true. Listening, discussing, using facts, and just stand by your conviction without anger or fear.
You don’t know how to do this because you yell, attack the person personally and troll their Facebook with memes and smart banter. You never actually win except in your own egotistical isolated world.
How to Communicate Assertively.
This is the most important skill you don’t know how to do because you either react to everything or you hide in fear. Don’t beat around the bush and don’t be aggressive, but just say what you mean to say. You don’t have to be some thug who is “keeping it real” and you don’t have to be someone who hedges everything they say with ‘maybes, probablys, kind ofs, sort ofs, I feel likes, sorry to say, you know? I could be wrong,’ Just say what you need to say.
Learn How to Apologize
Yes, most people actually don’t know how to apologize because we have been told we are so special and unique so how could a special and unique person apologize?
Get over yourself and say you’re sorry and name what you did wrong. Get ready to amend the wrong with making it right.
Learn How to Get Along With People
Yes, a lot of people are terrible, but you are also terrible. You can actually get along with all people if you actually put in any effort. Just be being genuinely interested in someone, remembering their name, asking them questions and making them feel important is all you need to do.
You don’t do that because you’re too busy trying to prove a point or trying to explain whom you are to anyone who will listen. You talk to damn much.
Career and Jobs
Learn Basic Time Management
Things take a certain amount of time to do and it takes a little work to make sure you start and end tasks at certain times so you aren’t rushing to get it done and running out of time.
You don’t do that and don’t know how to do that because a jobs time is in the way of your own time. Try being worth what you’re being paid.
Goals
Are you at a job and you always want to get off early but you are also always complaining about not having any money? It’s time to make some goals. Is the goal to make money or to always have free time? The two usually don’t work together.
Goals are important to keep you on task and so you don’t waste your life fucking off.
You don’t’ know how to do that because you only think about right now.
Shopping
Learn How to Pick Produce
How do you know if the melons are ripe or which tomatoes should you get? If you understood how to pick produce, you’d actually be eating better like you always say you are going to start doing, but you don’t ever learn how to pick produce because it’s easier to eat out all the time. I’ll buy this pizza pocket from the gas station and maybe tomorrow I’ll see what this kale is all about.
Learn How To Make Eggs
You can fry eggs, scramble eggs, hard boil eggs and even poach an egg. Just learning how to cook eggs a few different ways will help you move on to cooking other things.
Roast a Chicken
It is actually very easy to learn, but you just won’t because by the time you think about cooking you’re too hungry to hang out in the kitchen for that long, so you go off to tacos. You’d save so much money and eat like a king if you learned to roast a chicken.
BBQing and Hamburgers
Learn how to grill. You will actually become a much loved summer friend if you actually knew how to operate a grill, but you never did because you would rather go to McDonald’s and get a quarter pounder with cheese.
Learn How to Roast Vegetables
Like chicken, you’ll save money and eat like a king, but since you are a thirty something kid, you don’t eat any vegetables.
Clean Up After Yourself
Yes, cooking is fun, but you still need to clean up after yourself. You can’t just pile dishes in the sink and never do anything about it until there are flies and a smell that is raising the dead.
Home Ec.
Learn to Sew and Mend
Yes, everybody should learn to sew. You can have a shirt for so much longer if you can mend it and sew the buttons back on.
But you don’t learn that because you just go and buy new shirts because trends are more important than saving money and respecting your own property.
Car Maintenance
How to Jump a Car
If your car is dead, could you jump it? Do you have cables? Do you know which one the black wire goes to and which one the red wire goes to?
No, because you have triple A.
How To Change A Flat
Yes, you may need to get out of your car and change the tire. What if you are in the middle of nowhere and there might be zombies heading towards you and your car with a flat tire? Can you change the tire before your brain gets eaten?
Learn to Parallel Park
Especially if you’re going to be a city slicker, you need to parallel park. Extra points for parallel parking on a one-way street on the other side of the road.
You never learned because you grew up somewhere that had huge vast parking lots everywhere.
Home Ec. 2
Learn How to Type
Jesus Christ man, everything is on a computer. You will always need to write emails and memos and what have yous on the computer, so don’t be a hunt and pecker, learn to type.
Learn to Create a Budget
Don’t just spend money until it runs out and then have a Go Fund Me to save you from financial ruin, learn to live by a budget. Learn to shop for food and not buy Venti caramel soy lattes from Starbucks everyday. Have some financial goals instead of maybe camping this summer.
Learn How to Protect Your Computer
Either you need to not visit all the ad ware infested sites that show a Daily Show clips or a woman wearing a Chewbacca mask, or you need to learn to protect your computer from adware, spyware and viruses.
You never learned this because you don’t know anything about maintenance. You also don’t respect your own property.
Learn First Aid
Do you know CPR or how to deal with medical emergencies? The older you get the more you will find that knowing a little first aid will come in handy. Do you even have a first aid kit?
You never learned any first aid because you just expect that you are immortal and that medical issues happen to other people.
Life
Learn How to Dance
Knowing how to dance is such a great way to help your physical health along with your emotional health.
You don’t know how to dance because you are soooo scared of looking stupid.
Lean a Musical Instrument
It is nice to know how the music you like is made. Learn the piano or the guitar. Teach yourself songs and learn how to compose your own.
You never learned because new music taught us that knowing music doesn’t matter when it comes to making profitable pop music.
Learn a Card Game
Just be ready to throw some cards in case you spend a few years in prison. Poker is a classic game to know for social reasons and Bridge is a great game to know for intellect reasons. Magic: the Gathering doesn’t count.
Learn a Sport
Gym is too hard to keep going, but enjoying a game or a sport is a great way to get out and move around. There is problem solving, mind to body reaction coordination, and just plain fun compititition.
But you never learned any sports because you were too cool. You just didn’t like sweating.
Home Improvement
Learn to Use Tools
Learn how to use the different tools. You can fix anything once you know what tool you need to fix it.
You never learned because you can just call someone to fix it or you just ignore it.
Learn To Hang A Picture
Yes, you’ll need basic skills to hang a framed picture on your wall. This is way beyond thumbtacks and tape. Just making the picture straight will take enough skill.
You never learned this because you just had a huge poster of Tupac taped to your wall and you never thought anywhere you were was permanent.
You Should Learn How to Wire a House, Plumbing, Dry walling, Framing, basic electronics and other skills that are needed around a house.
You never learned any of that because you are a privileged little brat that never had to do anything for themselves.
Survival
Create a Fire Without Matches
Yes, you actually might get stuck in the woods without a book of matches, so knowing the power of fire will get you out of any survival situation.
You were too special to go and learn how to be outside.
How to Grow Your Own Food
Being able to grow your own food is a great hobby, it is cheap and it is fulfilling when you eat something you grew.
You wouldn’t know about that because you just buy stuff out of cans from a store and eat it because you’re hungry with no pride in what you eat.
There are many other things I could probably put on this list, but you won’t really take the time to learn any of these things because you only think about now and not really about the future and before you know it you’re forty something years old and you don’t know how to do anything for yourself. Being an adult is hard unless you teach yourself how to be and ask for help.