It's Not Me, It's You

by Jon Richardson

We invented happiness when finding food became too easy and survival became the norm.

The sun is already up but is hidden behind a blanket of thick cloud. The fine rain from last night has worsened, but only slightly. The skies are grey and it is as if all the colours have been washed away from the world by persistent rain. The greens of the trees and the blues of the skies are exposed as a veneer that couldn’t stand-up to the abuse the world has given them. Unlike most people, I love days like these! Sunny days are arrogant – they appear to challenge you to try and achieve enough to warrant the splendorous conditions they have created for you. They exist for morning people to get out and steal all the achievement so that they can be back in bed by seven o’clock in the evening with smug grins on their faces and their freshly ironed pyjamas on their peachy skinned bodies. ‘Still in bed, Jon?’ these days cry. ‘Why you’ve already wasted so much time! Go! Find your true love, feed them cherries on a chequered blanket by a lake. Ride bikes down hills and laugh heartily at the wonder of it all!’ I’m alright, thanks. You keep that. But there is no such challenge on a day like today. On a day when even the world outside the window cannot bring itself to smile, simply getting round to making a piece of toast feels like a victory over the circumstances.

To me, people are like the rocks that would break up the flow of the river. They burst into your life and impede your progress. There are relationships to maintain, bills to pay, there is work to do and fun to have before you can carry on with your journey. A select few will leave the spot they are in when you arrive and travel along with you a part of the way. It may seem, for a while at least, that your trip is no longer one that need be made alone. But no sooner have you become accustomed to their company, then they will get caught up on something, flow down a different channel or just break apart and disappear altogether and you will once again be alone, having now forgotten how you ever had the strength to travel alone in the first place.

When the foundations of your house are rotten, you do not paint your living room.

The friends you make as a child who stay with you throughout your life do so not because they find you attractive, or they gain financially from your time together, but because something deep down connects the two of you. Because you have stayed with each other through more than one period of your evolution.

It’s not true that you shouldn’t judge a book by its cover, since that is precisely why covers are put on books, to allow you to better understand the contents without going to the bother of reading them in their entirety. If this man were a book he would be called An Idiot’s Guide to Acting like a Total Wanker in Mundane Situations.