If all goes according to plan, I will eventually turn out to be a person who has sufficient experience to deal with the idiosyncrasies of this lifelike dream. So far in my adult life, I’ve never managed to grasp the main point of each decade until long after it was over. For instance, I was not supposed to spend my 30s anxiously trying to adhere to Cindy’s article of likeability and conformity. According to my friend Zach, I should have spent my 30s learning how to be a rude man in the short term, and a responsible man in the long term.

It seems as if each experience invited its own brand of self-divided personality to the party. You find yourself feeling compelled to do things you would rather not do. For example, you feel compelled to socialize with people you would rather not see because you have been influenced by peer pressure. Or, you feel compelled to hold back and not express interest in others because Zach said so.

What a mess!

What are all these experiences aimed toward -with all the contradictions and twisted logics? Are our experiences supposed to make us indispensable? Well, the graveyards are full of indispensable men and the bible is full of innocent ones. I’d rather let someone else filling those roles.