Friday, May 17, 2013

Its All Wretch and No Vomit


Hey Gang, 

   I watched a very impactful video via YouTube recently, and wanted to share with anyone who hasn't had the privilege to see it.

                   by Alan Watts
                      

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What do you desire?

  What makes you itch?

  What sort of a situation would you like?

Let's suppose... students, they come to me and say,

  "Well, we're getting out of college and we haven't the faintest idea what we want to do."

So I always ask the question,

  "What would you like to do if money were no object? What would, how would you really enjoy spending your life?"

Well, its so amazing, as a result of our kind of educational system, crowds of students say, "Well, we'd like to be doctors", "We'd like to be engineers.", "We'd like to be writers, but as everybody knows you can't earn any money that way." Another person says, "I'd like to live an outdoors life and go mountain climbing."

"Let's go through with it, what do you want to do?"

When we finally got down to something, which the individual says he really wants to do, I will say to him,

"You do that. And forget the money."

Because if you say that getting the money is the most important thing, you will spend your life completely wasting your time. You'll be doing things you don't like doing in order to go on living, that is, to go on doing things you don't like doing. Which is stupid.

"Better to have a short life that is full of what you like doing than a long life spent in a miserable way...."

But it's absolutely stupid to spend your time doing things you don't like in order to go on spending things you don't like and doing things you don't like, and to teach your children to follow in the same track.
See what we're doing is we're bringing up children, and educating them, to live the same sort of lives we're living. In order that they may justify themselves and find satisfaction in life by bringing up their children to bring up their children to do the same thing. So its all wretch and no vomit, it never gets there.
So therefore, its so important to consider this question: What do I desire?

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I included the script of the commentary from that video so I could show you all what impacted me the most the first time I watched the video. It stated, what I think, is the essence of what it will take to create a more successful and better-educated America. And that is where I derive my passion.

In answer to Watts' question, I desire to see more people living fulfilled lives than those living in quiet desperation. I believe that a vast majority of people are living below their true potential, and the method to interrupting this recurring pattern of turning out "average" has to start at the genesis of the life of the next generation. 

When two people decide to have children, they are making an 18-year commitment to raising a human-being(and anyone who accidentally gets pregnant has involuntarily made that same commitment). This is where the whole process starts: raising the next generation of human-beings organically to become a successful generation.

Over the duration of this blog, I will reveal some simple truths and my perspective on current, prevalent issues that I believe are extremely pertinent in today's society, as well as what I think are some of the keys to raising up the next generation to be more successful than any other generation has been before.

This is a small, crazy idea: changing the next American generation for the good. But there will be a movement created.. Leading to a more-prosperous, more-abundant America.


Please feel free to leave comments, questions, ideas, opinions. Your thoughts are greatly appreciated.

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