The Glass Has Been Smashed to Smithereens

And I'm stuck picking up the pieces.

Here’s the low-down: A while ago, I’m not really sure how far back but far, the glass fell, shall we say, and promptly splintered into a million little pieces that went absolutely everywhere and since that time I’ve been walking around my house with the occasional shard of glass lodging itself in my foot. 

            I think people who go around believing life is crap, bemoaning their fate, are despicable little creatures who are trying to influence the way people treat them.  Somehow, they got it into their heads to feel sorry for themselves and thus approach life with a mistaken sense of entitlement. People who think life is crap are too narrow-minded to realize that life barely knows they exist and wouldn’t care if they suddenly stopped.   I similarly feel that people who go around with the logo/motto “Life is good” have hidden agendas.  When I see “Life is good” merchandise go walking by I wait with baited breath to witness something horrible befall the wearer.

 Expressions like "The glass is half-empty," "The glass is half-full," are simply that, expressions. And shouldn't be used to base a whole life-perspective/outlook on.  And yet, this is the new English project.  Ever have that feeling like you've been ordered to open up about something that you find yourself unable to relate to or even contemplate?  It is my senior year in high school, we're going into our last month of school and it is only now that the teachers are beginning to risk hearing our opinions on life, asking us about life experiences, and what-have-you.  And, if we can't come up with enough experiences of our own (y'know, because of our short and sheltered lives spent with our noses pressed up against electronic devices) we can refer to characters or events we've encountered or been exposed to in literature, film, or other art forms.  I find this funny and odd.  And kind of sad.  At this point in our lives, we should be able to see that the characters in literature and film are based on the people around us.  Even if there is no direct connection, the characters in the movies, in books, were inspired by real people and if you look around you can pick them out of the social circles you move in.  You, yourself may be a character in a play or a movie or a novel.  It might be a farce.  It could be a tragedy.  But everyone has to reckon with a larger idea, that you are part of something bigger, part of a whole.  This should be recognized but too often it is ignored, or the words are twisted to manipulate for a specific purpose. 

I have nothing else to rant about at the moment. 
Oh, wait, here's the copy I'll hand to my English teacher:

The Glass Has Been Smashed to Smithereens

            After eons of angst, confusion, and self-doubt, it simply decided one day that it would never contain all it could, reach it’s full potential, nor would it be able to face the constant emptiness inside, and so the glass chose to end it’s eternal pondering of half full or half empty.  The glass promptly splintered into a million little pieces that went absolutely everywhere and were incredibly hard to pick up. Since that time I’ve felt the glass’s anxious presence as I walked around my house with the occasional shard of glass lodging itself in my foot. 

            I can never relate to expressions like “Life is crap” or “Life is good.”  I feel like people who think life is crap have somehow fooled themselves into a mistaken sense of entitlement and are too narrow-minded to realize life barely knows they exist and wouldn’t care if they suddenly stopped.  It would simply go on.  I similarly feel that people who go around with the logo/motto “Life is good,” have hidden agendas.  When I see “Life is good,” merchandise go walking by I wait with baited breath for some horrible fate to befall the wearer. 

            To use a grossly abused and cheesy expression, life is what you make of it.  I would consider myself pretty optimistic but friends and people who know me relatively well have at different points called me paranoid, pessimistic, and suspicious and also sometimes bitter.  I think I’m more observant than they are.  And less forgiving.   I see now, after learning about Toaism and the different philosophies that my outlook on life, which has not changed really for quite some time, has elements of Toaism, transcendentalism, as well as other religions like zoroastrianism.  I also must notice that many of the philosophies we learned about connected to each other and different events in history, like the formation of Protestantism, pop-culture movements, and other, darker events like the rise of Jim Jones. To sum it all up; life is a joke, and I don’t mean that in a scornful way, I mean that life is laughing at you, it’s laughing at everyone one of us and we have to choose whether to laugh along with it.  We have to understand that we are all part of something bigger.