Namflow

[Rant] The Life Pain

"The Life Pain" - This is an expression coined by the mighty members of Rizrar to describe the pain occured through the simple act of existance. It was originally introduced as a joke to describe how alcohol "dulls the life pain." Although introduced as a joke it has stuck and it makes me wonder - I mean, what if there was an RPG where your character was constantly posioned causing a slow yet methodical loss of hp every second of every hour of every day you played... is such an RPG our lives?

So last night while I tried to fall asleep I thought about what causes this so called life pain. Is the act of living, in and of itself, painful? Is it caused by the annoying things we are forced to do that keep us from doing what we want to do? Is it because we have to go to work 40 hours a week instead of staying at home and playing WOW in our underwear? Or maybe it's taxes... I mean, how crazy is it that just by being born we are obligated to pay upkeep on our existance.

Or maybe the life pain is not caused by what we have to do, but what we haven't done. Everyone has a vision of their ideal life, ingrained in us from birth via tv, movies, disney, etc. What if your life isn't as you expected, is that what causes the life pain? Such an ideal life pry consists of having a fulfilling, fun, and sastisfying job, a model-quality wife who enjoys doing everything you do, a few kids, maybe a dog or two, and your set. Well, what if your life doesn't meet your expectations? What if you don't like your job, or you do like it but it isn't the best you could do? (I think the best job ever would be to be a pr0n actor and producer. That way your job is to screw hot, hot chicks and then you get a large % of the DVD sales - what could be a better job than that?) Or maybe your girlfriend is ugly, or she doesn't understand why you want to play WOW 12 hours a day, or maybe she just doesn't give good head. Perhaps by living a life that is not what you invisioned, or not what you wanted, that causes the life pain.

I think each of us is affected by the life pain to varying degrees. I mean, why does a dude who has a hot girlfriend still whack it to pr0n? Why does a millionaire want even more money? Do they have more or less life pain than the rest of us?

And when the life pain gets too high you need to do something that dulls it. Perhaps my favorite way to dull the life pain is sleep. Just this week I slept 10 hours one night and 13 the next. Sleeping is awesome - you don't need to think, it's free, you can do it whenever you are tired, and the most beautiful part - you don't actually do anything but lay there and your body thanks you for it!

Another great life pain duller is reading about people whose life is far worse than my own. That's why I love reading people's blogs. Not happy blogs, but blogs where people suffer, where shitty things happen to them, and somehow reading about other people's shitty lives makes me feel better.

Perhaps another one of my favorite ways to dull the life pain is through the sweet, sweet, nectar of god himself, alcohol. What's great about alcohol is that it blurs the line between being awake and being asleep. Your awake, but it doesn't seem as real as normal. It also helps the transition from being awake to going to sleep. Being drunk also makes annoying things seem passable, and normally entertaining things extraordinary.

But at what point does dulling the life pain actually increase your life pain, or decrease your life expectancy? Cause I'd guess that almost everyone wants to live the happiest life they can for
as long as possible. Drinking makes my life more fun now, but it could make my life more painful in the future, or could reduce the length of my life. A wise man once said, "Life after retirement is all about xtacy and hookers." Maybe he's onto something - you live your life and work and are good, but once your retired your gonna die sooner or later - might as well have the best time you can. But what if you die before retirement? What if you just collapse dead tomorrow? Well then maybe you should have started doing extacy and hookers a damned long time ago.

At work today, instead of correcting tests or preparing lessons for next week, I made the following chart, which I envisioned as a guide to how long you will live vs how much you actually enjoy life. And in the creation of this graph I dulled my own life pain for the enjoyment of all.