Self improvement is masturbation. – Tyler Dirden
This very quote, as funny as it sounds, has got me scratching my head thinking ‘why do I do what I do in life’. Today I went to work. I pushed carts around with long pants on in 85 degree heat, performed mind numbing bagging, and walked around the store putting stuff away on the shelves. Why do I do all of this? Is everything I do to make my self happy?
Obviously I subject my self to my job so that I can get paid, so I can exchange my blood, sweat and tears for dollar bills. What good is a dollar bill though? Money it self can not make you happy, only the things you buy with it can. Money is 100% potential happiness. So I use this money that took me over 100 hours of work at a job that I hate to buy a pair of skis that allow me to land backwards. Ok now this makes me happy …. right?? Wrong. It’s july and they’re sitting on my bed. So far all of this hard work and anguish has yet to pay off. Okay, so winter comes along and I finally get to use them. I go off a jump in the terrain park and stomp a 180. HELL YEAH!! Now I’m happy, right? Oops, it’s a weekday at seven springs and there isn’t a soul on the slopes. Nobody saw the cool trick I just performed. Why do I even do it then?? The only reason to perform a trick on skis is to impress another person. I come down the hill again and there are a couple of snowboarders sitting at the top of the hill now. This time I float a big 180 and throw in a safety grab. As I’m cruising down the landing of the tabletop-jump backwards I catch a glimpse of one of the snowboarders clapping. Now I am happy.
All of the hard work at Shop ‘N Save 7 months ago, and the anticipation has all finally paid off. It has all paid off because a faceless stranger that I’ve never met, and probably never will meet again was mildly impressed with a jump I did. I spent over $2000 dollars on ski equipment over the summer so that I could impress this stranger. This is what makes me happy. I raise my glass to you stranger, that jump was for you.
Self-Improvement IS masturbation. Anything and Everything we do in life is to make ourselves happy. Money and material objects are simply ways of getting to that eventual goal. So why do we do these things that make us happy? Well in my opinion happiness is the only reason to live. If your not living for happiness then why live at all? Whether it’s doing a trick or giving a girl that I deeply care about a kiss, I do it for me. I makes her happy, which in turn makes me happy.
There is no such thing as a completely self-less act. Sure giving up blood is something you do for another person, but you do it because you want them to be okay. You WANT them to be okay. You do it for YOU and no one else. At first I disagreed with this quote because I misinterpreted it to mean ‘Self Improvment is a waste of time’. When in reality nothing is farther from the truth. Happiness is derived from self improvment, thus self improvment is a reason to live.
~Inspired by the movie Fight Club and a conversation with Brandon Klein~
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