Hunter Said It. It Must Be True.....

A look at a quote from Hunter S. Thompson and how I apply it to my life.

“But why not float if you have no goal? That is another question. It is unquestionably better to enjoy the floating than to swim in uncertainty. So how does a man find a goal? Not a castle in the stars, but a real and tangible thing. How can a man be sure he’s not after the “big rock candy mountain,” the enticing sugar-candy goal that has little taste and no substance?”

                The quote above comes from none other than the late, great writer, Hunter S. Thompson. I still have no idea where the words this man wrote came from. I read his books and articles and become absolutely dumbfounded at the originality and creativity his opinions offered. This particular quote is taken from a letter he wrote in 1958, at the age of 22, to a friend asking for advice on the meaning of life. I have read this letter three times today. Being a 26-year-old guy living in 21^st century America, I myself question the meaning of life at least 20 or 30 times a day. Why am I here? Where am I going? What should I do for the rest of my life? You know the usual question everyone asks. I don’t care if you are a 14 year old high school freshman being asked by teachers about your future, a middle aged housewife, or a 20 year military war veteran, everyone asks those questions.

                This specific quote stuck out at me because it offers a solution to a problem that society often shuts down immediately. Why not float when you have no goal? I mean doesn’t that seem like the logical choice? Sure, it might not fit into the business plan of life, go to school, graduate, pick a career, start a family, retire, and die, but let us be honest, life never works as planned. I, for one, find peace in this simple solution offered by 22-year-old Mr. Thompson. I am 26 and I have no idea what I want out of life. Well, no, let me rephrase that. I know exactly what I want out of life, I just have absolutely no f*****g clue how to get there. I’m sitting here on the balcony of my current residence (which is the apartment of the mother of my daughter, and her roommate), searching the confines of my mind, looking for a goal or a plan and I cannot find one. I suppose being a good father to my 10 week old daughter, Carmen, is a good goal to have, but that’s not a sustaining goal. That is not going to pay my bills, or give me a career, or progress my own inner-spirituality. Sure, there are plenty of career stay-at-home dads out there, however, those dads are typically backed by a strong career woman that brings in the dough. I do not classify in that category, therefore it is not a career option for this guy.

                I am a floater. I am without direction, aimlessly meandering through life just living for the next day. Should I not be happy and enjoy it? I feel so much pressure from the world around me to figure my future out that I cannot possibly be happy, only stressed to the point I want to tear my brain out of my skull with a dull ice pick. Sorry, not the most pleasant image I realize, and I sincerely apologize to any of those who know me, for the gruesome nature of my dilemma, but such is the truth and nobody ever said the truth was pretty. I long to be a 10 year old child again, because no one expects your future to be decided at ten. No pressure for a ten year old. That’s unfair, I’m sure there are parents out there who pressure their 10 year olds for perfection, but thankfully my parents are not among them.

                Anyway, back to my question, should I not enjoy floating? Should I not learn to love living in the uncertainty that is floating? I am surviving to live another day. Not knowing where I will be in 15 years is not death. I may not even be living in 15 years, so why make a plan for a moment I might not even be here for? This is not to say that one should just say “f**k it” and do what they want, when they want, no matter the opinions of others. I certainly would not want to make a decision that would hurt my daughter, sister, mother, father, or best friend, I have been down that road before and I don’t plan on revisiting. All I am saying is that, even though I don’t really have a set plan, shouldn’t it be celebrated that I’m going to be here for the next day? The future is ludicrous! There is no way to plan for it, and you are a bigger idiot than anyone realized if you think you can. For instance, currently I am technically unemployed. Sure I make money working for a friend of the family, but it is not permanent employment with a steady pay check. And while I am here, sitting on this balcony writing, smoking a black and mild, listening to Sandstorm by Da Rude, I could be looking for permanent employment, does that mean I should stress myself out with worry, causing my inevitable unhappiness? F**k that! The sun is shining brightly at 7:15 pm, its approximately 70 degrees outside, and I should be enjoying this moment! Not sitting around stressing that I don’t have permanent employment.

                There may be some of you out there thinking, “What the hell is wrong with you? You have a daughter! You should be thinking of her. You should be doing all you can to ensure she is well taken care of.” Well to all those people, make no mistake, my concern for my daughter is unshakable. She is my number one priority, and her well-being matters more to me than my own. My sitting here in this gorgeous weather does not hinder her health. Yes, I might could be putting some more effort into job searching, but what I have found in this moment is peace, yes peace. Peace is a rare accommodation these days, with the world around me living off of stupid pills, I find that when I find these peaceful moments I must embrace them. What would I be gaining by stressing myself over my unemployment? What good would I be to my daughter if I were a stressed out wreck?

                The past 10 years I have done nothing but worry, about everything. Worrying about a job, worrying about money, worrying about everyone else’s opinion of me. I have spent countless hours comparing myself to those around me and trying desperately to be just like them because I wanted people to look at me like them. Look at me like someone who has their s**t together, who is successful. Who was I kidding? In the last 10 years I can think of very few moments where I had my s**t together. But instead of trying to embrace the floating, I tried to fight the current and I gotta tell you my arms are tired. I can think of so many fun times I had in those many years, and then I can also remember how s****y I felt about them because I should have been focusing on other more important things. What was I thinking? I’m still here aren’t I? I might not be at the top of the fortune 100, but I am here and I still have tomorrow. I should be thankful for that right? Why stress myself about those fun mistakes I made? Why not embrace them for what they are and move on? Easier said than done. Hunter S. Thompson’s quote above brought some clear insight to the forefront of my mind. I’m tired of being ashamed of my floating. I’m tired of thinking that others won’t see me as an adult because I never lived a “conventional” lifestyle. F**k the others. F**k the conventional. It’s time to embrace the floating. I’m going to keep right on floating down the river of life until I find the right current to swim with.

                The rest of the letter goes on to discuss how to find a goal. Yes, floating is not something to be ashamed of, but reality does dictate, and reality does require a goal. Now me, I have no goals, outside of being a good father. No clear cut island to swim towards. Naturally, I have the givens. Find a job and find a place of residence for myself, but nothing past that. While reading the letter, I got to thinking of what goals I even want. Only goal I can even think of pursuing is finding a permanent career. Finding that one job I can see myself doing until I am 65 and retirement is an option. In the letter, Hunter explains that all too often, we as humans, conform ourselves to the goals we have set for ourselves when it should be the other way around. Our goals should conform to our own desires. Now, we humans are ever evolving. Our desires and needs change every single second, of every single day. Therefore, our goals should conform to ourselves. What does that even mean? How can that be accomplished? The world expects us to choose a course of life and stay on that path, living in the 21^st century does not accommodate such things. A career is defined as “an occupation undertaken for a significant period of a person’s life and with opportunities for progress”. So, how am I supposed to find a “career” that is as ever evolving as my world? I can’t even think of anything remotely desirable to do for a significant period of my life. I am like a child, one week I want to be a car salesman, the next a writer, the next a politician, so on and so on. With a changing personality like mine, what am I to do for the rest of my life. Ever since I was of age to be legally employed, my place of occupation as routinely changed. I have worked in restaurants, sold cars, driven forklifts, worked landscaping, and I even spent some time in the US Air Force. Every time I get a job I enjoy it without fail for about 6 months, then I grow bored with it and my mind wanders on to something else. In the letter Hunter states that a man “a man must choose a path which will let his ABILITIES function at maximum efficiency toward the gratification of his DESIRES”, which makes perfect sense to anyone who reads it, right? (Also, I just have to say, that statement is extremely profound, considering the man who wrote it was 22) The problem I seem to run into, is the fact that my desires keep changing. Therefore I ask the question, what do I do then?

            I suppose the only solution is to conform the goal. I think that is what Hunter was getting at. Instead of looking at my goal for a career and trying to change myself to make the goal possible, I need to change the goal to make my own life and happiness possible. Which brings me to another question. How should I amend my goal? Difficult question. I need to make a living so that I may provide for myself and my daughter. It makes me feel like I’m in a maze, stuck at a fork. I know where the end is, and yet I have no idea how to get there. My life is guess and check. I pick through different jobs, guessing that I could do this for 20 years, then I check it out by doing it. So far my guess and check method has definitely bred results, all failures. The voice in my head keeps saying “f**k it, write a book”, which I suppose is what has led me to sit at my laptop typing away.

            There are days I fear I will never figure it out. I will always be a floater, never settling. I’m destined to wander the universe searching for the path in life that is my own and never finding it. That is most days. It is a truly scary feeling. I might even venture so far as to say it is my biggest fear, but there are so many to sift through that I don’t know how accurate that analysis would be. That brings me back to my “embrace the floating” campaign. Why should I stress my lack of career, or the thought I may never find one? Can I truly say my life is all that terrible? No. I have a roof over my head, food to eat, and I know that no matter what happens to me my daughter WILL be taken care of. So what if I never find a career? Maybe floating will be my career. Just going along with the flow of the river that is life, letting it sweep me away where it wishes. Is that so terrible? The school system might think so. The ideals I am sharing are taboo for a system that puts pressure on teenagers all across America to choose their path in life. Well I say to hell with them and their system.

            I believe there are kids out there that know what they want to do, and to them I say “Congrats and reach for the stars”, but to the ones who are clueless, don’t worry, you are not alone. To my fellow floaters I say “Embrace and be happy!” At this point I could care less if anyone thinks I am wrong and I need to be silenced. Oh believe me, I know there are parents out there who would be horrified if I told there child it is ok not to know what you want out of life, I have met a few in my time. Those people, wherever they are, will just have to learn to live with my opinion, it will not change. We no longer have Hunter S. Thompson with us, but that doesn’t mean that his view of the world should die with him. Consider me an advocate. I’m not here to claim that I’m Hunter re-incarnate, but I do want to say that he has helped me start to learn to embrace my failures and mistakes. I may not be perfect, I may have made a lot of screw ups. However I can definitely tell you that I have had some fun. My favourite quote from HST is “I wouldn’t recommend sex, drugs, or insanity for everyone, but they’ve always worked for me.” I’m not quoting it because that’s the way I live my life, I am quoting it because I feel that all too often society frowns upon qualities deemed “uncouth”, when sometimes the “uncouth” work for people. Imagine, if Hunter had bought into the ideal that sex, drugs, or insanity were inconceivable, we would never have been given such amazing literary works as Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas, The Rum Diaries, or Kingdom of Fear.

            I ask anyone reading this to take two steps back, and if you evaluate yourself as a floater, don’t let it ruin your self-confidence. EMBRACE IT!!!! There is no written rule that says you must conform to your goals. Conform your goals, and anyone who tells you different flip them the bird, move on with your life, and smile while doing it! It has taken me 26 years to learn this, it doesn’t happen overnight, but yea, it does happen.

Author's Note

I am just looking for feedback on what I need to do with my writing to possibly get published one day.

Reviews

[barleygirl]

Your ideas are reasonably well-expressed, your command of writing is definitely above average, & your self-confidence is rare, in that you can say all this seemingly without apology or even chagrin. However, I don't really believe your bluster and I don't think you do, either. The thing that stands out the most about your journaling is your level of self-absorption. It makes you come across as a pretty unlikeable person. I find myself feeling sorry for your child and the mother of your child. It's not becuz of your work ethic of lack of it. It's becuz you can write this much and refer to your daughter a number of times, yet you never even say one f*****g word that comes close to "love" or even a shallow show of "adoration" as a DNA reflection of your narcissistic a*s. This is truly a mind-boggling ramble of total self-absorption. I actually think it's impossible for most parents to refrain from at least describing something about their child. Your writing is completely devoid of anything that might suggest you even know what the f**k color her hair or eyes might be. Normally, I would just click off this pile of horseshit & get on with my life. I don't even know why I'm writing this. Maybe I need to go smoke a joint.