Big Paper for a good and meaningful life

Don’t you ever sit in class during a random discussion/ lecture and think to yourself, is my life meaningful? And the answer to that question is based on the person who is answering the question because there are a various amount of answers. Some people will give you the answer “well of course my life is meaningful just because I’m me,” there are those others who will give you the answer “I think my life is actually kind of average and that it isn’t nothing special,” and then there are those who are just like “my life don’t mean shit.” These answers come from inside and deep down where u can honestly and rationally think about life. And the answer to this has to do with a person’s situation in life. Most of the time if a person has a very rich family they feel that their life means everything, usually the middle class can go both ways, and lower class feel like shit because they have no money so they feel like they mean nothing. The reason this is, is because those with good grades and a lot of money feel that their life is going somewhere but poor people with their life in turmoil feel their lives are meaningless because they feel they are so far down the shitter and can’t get out. In my situation I feel like I’m in between the middle class perspective and the lower class perspective. The reason I think so is because my life is kind of messed up now because of my grades and that my parents keep taking things away from me. But this doesn’t mean that my life is meaningless in my eyes. To me it says my life can be more meaningful if I just do something about it.

When I asked other people on the street, I was getting mixed answers. And the variety of these answers had to do with the person’s situation in life. I remember I asked this guy who was sitting on a bench on 22nd street and he told me that his life wasn’t really meaningful. He said that on a scale of 1-10 with 10 being the most meaningful that his life was a 4/10. And the reason he gave me was that he was having problems and he didn’t know where his life was going. In my opinion he wasn’t rich and he was struggling to find his way in the world. On the contrary the dean of SOF Mr. Marks actually feels very confident about the meaning of his life. He felt that on the scale of 1-10 that his life was an 8. This tells me that because of his occupation he feels that his life really means something. That it is meaningful to make sure that kids are safe, a school system is running smoothly, and that he has the good feeling that he is sending America’s youth into college. So different people have different views on their importance in life based on their current situation in life.

After watching the music video, All You Need is Love; by The Beatles it gave me an entire different view of having a meaningful life. On the contrast of Kanye with being pimped out with cars, money, and ladies. The Beatles demonstrate an entirely different point of view of a meaningful life by saying to have meaning is to love. So like if you don’t love something, it doesn’t mean anything. By saying this it practically pushes aside everything that Kanye stated in his video that you need money and ladies. But The Beatles think that love makes life meaningful. That money can’t buy you happiness. It’s only that if you find something in life that’s close to you and you can live by and then you will be happy. Also in the video it was not as hyped and crazy as Kanye’s was. Kanye’s was more flashy, new, and louder. While The Beatles was a lot mellower, the music was more like a melody then a tear up the club song, and it was sending message in more harmonic way. So all together, The Beatles had a way different view on a meaningful life then Kanye did.

After watching the music video, The Good Life by Kanye West I feel that this pop culture message was faced more towards the messages of corporate culture. The reason I bring this up is due to the fact the video is practically what the title of the song is “Good Life.” And Kanye West is portraying this message of a “Good Life,” to mean that you are crazy rich, have all the new technology, be pimpin’/ have lots of ladies that want you, etc. This supports corporate culture messages because in lots of magazines/ newsstands/ newspapers, the people with a “Good Life,” are the rich and powerful ones like Kanye is showing in his video. In the verse in his video where Kanye says “Y'all pop the trunk, I pop the hood, Ferrari. And she got the goods. And she got that ass, I got to look, sorry,” says that while most people will be needing help with their car and needing to pop the trunk, Kanye is showing off his hot ride by popping the hood of it to show off his nice fast engine. Then he starts talking about the ladies by stating she “she got the goods. And she got that ass, I got to look, sorry.” Which is saying that a woman has a lot to show off like a big ass and other things and if you living the “Good Life,” you have women like these. So all together, Kanye is saying the “Good Life,” is to pimped out with money, cars, and ladies.

While our discussions of having a good and meaningful life came the idea of misery. The theory that all lives must follow this line of corporate misery and we just use their products to get happy. Like the company Apple for instance. If you feel bad inside because you can’t listen to your music on the go, Apple will tell you to buy one of our music products such as the I-phone, I-Touch, and IPod Nano in order to get happy so you can listen to music on the go. But then you will feel like crap again when they come out with a new piece of “I,” technology and you say to yourself that you want that instead of what you got and then feel like crap because you can’t get it. So we people in the world follow this line of products as distractions to make us happy.
Another theory of misery that I have is the idea that life is meant to be miserable. And people reading this might say to themselves, “Well I’m happy, I feel no misery.” But the fact is that if a person’s life was a “perfect fit,” for them, in my opinion life would just feel like it would have no meaning and just be plain out boring. The reason that in life when we are having fun and don’t want to stop it is because we want to stay distracted from the bad. But if there was no bad, there would be no reason to good and vice versa. It is all the bad times that make the good times feel so much more special. For me it has to do with my want to not be in school and rather being out doing something that I’m interested in more. But I think if life was like that and I was allowed to do what I wanted all the time without do consequence, I would believe it would get boring because I would be doing it so much. All that time of being bored and having that “I can’t wait to do this,” feeling and then actually doing what you wanted to do feel totally awesome. In my case for example, a couple of weeks ago I got tickets to the Cowboys vs. Giants game for a Sunday afternoon. And I knew I was going with someone who is a very special person in my life and that I’ve known since middle school. And the Tuesday I found out she could go made it extra exciting to see my favorite football team for the first time against our NFC East rival Dallas Cowboys knowing that I was going with someone who is special. But the part the spiced up this excitement that led to a great time and a great game was that school misery I had/ still have. That feeling of being totally bored the majority of my week and then being able to have the experience of a lifetime with someone who is special and had a great time too was a great experience.
But having these great experiences isn’t always a good thing. The reason is that even though we don’t want it like this but to some, having too many good experiences can be bad things. The reason is that if you get too used to the good, you will forget how to cope with the bad and it can lead to an endless list of consequences depending on the person. To some it might lead to getting down and negative about an issue and took others it might lead to crazy aggression. This isn’t saying that having good is a bad thing, but having too much good and then just losing all or most of it can lead to worse things than if you had a lot of bad and a little bit of good. In my case for instance, I feel that my schooling is being affected due to a lack of balance of the good and bad. I am having too much bad happen in my life and not enough good. So every time I have an opportunity for good I take it even if I know it’s not the right time. This has been affecting my schoolwork because the only time I can look for good is when I’m doing homework because that’s the only time I know I’ll get it. So instead of concentrating on the task at hand, I’m looking for the good at the wrong time due to losing all my good and now facing “the withdraw of good,” or just retaliating because I’m not used to this much bad.