The Cycle

Does anyone else notice that everyone lives life pretty much in the same way?

How many people in the United States get a steady job, work 9 to 5, five days a week? How many buy a sensible car with good gas mileage, room for groceries and maybe kids?

I think it’s a lot.

These people get married between the ages of 25 and 30, mostly between the months of April and July. They start families and move to a reasonably big house in the suburbs. Then, after arriving in the burbs, they spend their days commuting into some city to work in some office or factory, pressing buttons or pushing papers. On the weekends, they mow the lawn and pull weeds out of the front garden.

Sometimes they take vacations, mostly to Disney World. They might head to Busch Gardens, just to be different.

That’s life. That’s life?

Everyone seems programmed. Graduate high school, go to college, get a job, marry someone, move to the suburbs, have children and hang out in Nowheresville until death or retirement. Nobody is thinking. At least it seems to me like nobody is thinking.

Because what never occurs to me is the possibility that for the large percentage of the world who aren’t writers or actors or Wall Street stock brokers, that kind of life is pleasant and comfortable, instead of boring and asphyxiating. Who wouldn’t want to work a steady job or drive a comfortable car or live in a well-kept, upscale neighborhood? What’s wrong with watching Two and A Half Men and Two Broke Girls?

Nothing, besides the fact that, you know, there’s nothing all that spectacular or great about it either.