Surviving The Fall, 22

Today, Gentle Reader, I am going to write about a couple of my First World Problems. Yes, even I get them, partly because I have benefited from a First World Upbringing in a First World Country. Well, maybe my upbringing was a little less than First World as things got pretty rocky after my parents' divorce and my life still hasn't really settled since that unfortunate event, even though it's almost fifty years later. But things are a lot better than they used to be. Now, I don't make a First World income. I never have. My earnings would be more on par with a lower middle class salary in Mexico, with what I earn, like many low wage earners in my country. However, I can complain about my friends. I have friends I can complain about. And that is a real First World Problem since it implies that I am privileged enough to have friends. I don't complain about them for being horrible people, since they're all good and decent and kind, otherwise, they would not be my friends. Remember that old Russian saying (but I think it's also Spanish, Italian, Chinese, German, Japanese, to name but a few)...If you really want me to know you, introduce me to your friends. Well, Gentle Reader, some of my friends are disorganized flakes. Not all of them. Age and generation seem to play a role. The older ones, who are around my age, give or take a year or two, have greater humility. Much greater. If they're behaving like twits, and I tell them (kindly, of course), they take it very well, apologize and stop behaving like twits. And I do try to reciprocate with the same kind and receptive response when they need to tell me the same. They are also much more considerate of my time and generally seem better organized. But I don't know if this comes through the wisdom and humility that comes from the many good ass-kickings we get in life; or maybe it's generational. We grew up without the high tech distractions that younger people (I mean younger than fifty!) seem to embrace as all too convenient excuses for being unreliable douchebags. Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, cat videos and porn. And not necessarily in that order. I think the younger ones have also grown up with a sense of selfish entitlement that my generation had only not quite sloughed off. It was, unfortunately, my demographic, the Boomers (though I'm a bit younger, Generation Jones and a bit less entitled than those smug morons) that launched the Me Generation and now we are paying for our folly through the nose and other orifices. And they get, oh, so angry, hurt and petulant when I tell them, plead with them, ask them, remonstrate with them that maybe they could be a little more considerate of others, a little bit less self-centred, a little more organized. It really isn't that difficult, by the way, to be organized. I am very well-organized. However, it has taken me years to get to where I am. I also am very spiritually centred, with a strong discipline of prayer and sacred reading, and I do tend to organize my life around my Christian faith and desire to serve humankind. I also have to remind myself every day that I am the oddity, here, most people are just out for themselves, put themselves first, and also flail and struggle out of their own inner chaos that results from chronic and culturally embedded narcissism. Younger people usually lack much of a calm spiritual centre to their lives (not a lot of older ones seem to have this either, unfortunately). Hence the booming industry of meditation and Yoga classes and other bogus commercialization of enlightenment. Well, I almost never cancel on people, myself. But this is because I care enough. And that is one of the key features in having friends and maintaining sustainable and healthy relationships. Putting yourself in other people's shoes. Now, often it gets to be like I'm the only one doing this and then things can get really unbalanced from this chronic casting pearls before swine and that is when it comes time to remind people. This is also a valuable litmus test for the quality of a friendship. As William Blake famously wrote in his Proverbs of Hell, "Speak your mind to a base man (or an asshole) and he will avoid you."