Additional Thoughts

Thank god for children. At least they smile without needing a reason for doing it. Also, I tried to start conversations whenever possible, for the most part. In Cape Verde, I've developed the habit of sort of staring at people for a little longer than we normally deem acceptable; it's normal there. So, I practiced this on the metro, but did not receive a response. Something would've been better than nothing. "What are you looking at freak?!?" "Why don't you take a picture it lasts longer?!?!?" Anything. At least, I would've have felt acknowledged.

From what I've learned and seen, life seems to be an upside-down bell curve in terms of happiness. Meaning all throughout our infancy and childhood, life is great, not a care in the world. Everything is new and appears to be the shit, as a result we smile on a whim. Your slipping on ice is the funniest thing that ever happened to you. Life is great. Then as we grow out of childhood and youth, graduate college and start to think about "making money" and "a career". Your life immediately goes into the shithole. You start wearing suits, acting like a douche-bag, honking your horn in traffic, basically being a huge ass-hole because you realize that your life sucks. This is a terrible stage in life; one that needs saving. We only care about ourselves and our situation. The world doesn't exist outside of our bubble. This stage is can be saved by major events, births of children, marriage, etc. But sometimes these things can complicate the problem and worsen things. And as we grow old, we see the bottom coming up, causing us to be a little more cheerful. In general, elderly people seem to be more open to conversation and start to value their time a little more. As a result, I think that they begin to value the people around them a little more.

Why do we let our younger working years and middle aged years blow balls? These are seemingly are most productive years, but what is it that we are focused on producing? What is our ultimate goal? We change this, maybe will find a little more happiness.

Again, these are my opinions and may be completely wrong. There are probably a lot of crabby old people who don't care about anyone but themselves. But, in general, I think life breaks down as I've explained.

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