Sometimes

Sometimes, life feels hopeless. I’m sure much of the nation feels that way right now. Heck, maybe even the whole world. Some people go through tragedy with more… ability, than others. Our job is to find ways to adapt, defend ourselves, or just find a way to trudge on. The truth is, with or without a job, life is rough. The people in your life that cause you pain are usually the people you rely on. Is that irony or is that just sick? The people that don’t need to rely on anyone usually end up alone, and bitter.
Why are parents so hard to get along with? Why do they have to compare their own child(ren) to every other kid out there? Even when we’re not kids anymore, they still treat us like kids, not because we were the infants they once held, but because they can’t seem to start respecting us adults when we finally grow up. We can’t get along with them when we’re kids, because we’re not old enough to understand the world. Once we began to understand the world, they treat us as if we’ll never understand the world, or better yet, they treat us as if we will never understand them. The bitterness I feel is that parents never seem to understand their child(ren). Let me just be real honest (with myself). My parents will never understand me. The language barrier I face with them, the generation gap, their mindset and mine, we will never cross paths. The few times we do get along, the encounters feel shallow and brief. That sort of encounter is what we’re comfortable with. We probably can’t hope for anything better, nor do we strive for better. Yet, we both know we’re unhappy with each other. I just choose not to mention my unhappiness. Why bring up that sort of bitterness? Yet, my parents choose to bring up my “shortcomings” whenever they feel they “can’t take it anymore” (“shi zai shou bu liao le”). Well, I can’t take it anymore either, but I feel I must endure it all. Someone’s got to give, right?
Yet, they'll never be satisfied. It never seems enough. I think I'll always be their 'unfinished product.' When they speak to me or look at me, I'll be made to feel incomplete. At least, I'll be aware of what my shortcomings are, in their eyes. Criticism is supposed to toughen you up in life. Without it, we all go along blissfully ignorant. I do miss the days of my childhood when I was ignorant of how the world works. However, I wasn't all that happy at the time either. Even then, I constantly felt compared to other kids. I just didn't care as much if I didn't measure up. As I got older, it did bother me. How can I try so hard and still not measure up, to someone else's standards? Now, I know, I may never measure up. That's just a pill we all have to swallow.
Just keep trudging on.

On a separate note, the amount of people being laid off out there just grows and grows. I really think all these stimulus checks are just another way to take the easy way out, another short-term remedy to bite us in the ass years down the line. Keep passing along the debt to future generations. If there's one thing the humans know how to do, it's popping out children. Sidebar: I don't understand the 'need' to bear children. If children are so disappointing, and so much turmoil arises from creating a family, what is the point? Anyways, as long as the world can breed, there is someone else to handle all the money we have borrowed in the past, present, and future.
Instead, can't we think of a way to create more jobs? If we can somehow repair the job market and rebuild the value of savings, then we might not be in the mess. If we can help people earn consistent paychecks, they will start buying things. This will stimulate commerce. If we continue borrowing, won't we just dig ourselves deeper and deeper into a depression, as we have been doing for what seems like, what, a decade, or forever now?