How often do you get someone telling you that “you need to get a grip of your life”?

As far as I can remember, or even if I do try to remember, those words have been shovelled into my conscience just as much a juvenile delinquent would receive from doting parents. Every time it struck the heart, sinking a rusted anvil down my gut. It was funny how I wouldn’t develop immunity towards it, much as I often do to things that were constantly bulldozed over me, and the familiar feeling would clog my throat until I mentally whisper enough consolation to myself. Consolation... hah! How proper that word fits… I console myself that I need not rise to grasp my life into perpetual order. It’s pathetic.

Yeah, perhaps it’s about time to grab life into a Russian chokehold and drop it with a German suplex. Much as I hate to admit it, I am a pampered brat. Pampered by the existence of a maid, and pampered by my own optimistic thinking… words that I fill myself with that tell me that life would in fact unravel peacefully like red carpet, and all I have to do is strut like Jude Law towards the opening night of Cold Mountain. I’ve allowed sheer naivety to govern what I decide, and haven’t most of my decisions faltered shatteringly into shards of disappointment?

My brother had issued me the newest “you need to get a grip of your life” line a few days back, successfully drenching me with a cold bucket of reality and realisation, after dad nagged me for not getting my hair cut over the week when I promised I would by Thursday. I’ve been telling myself that there were circumstances to my not going to the barbers, but all I did was feeding me with concocted excuses for jumping into decisions that were selfless in a less fancy manner. And after that I didn’t what to think. I didn’t know what to tell myself. I was, once again, in a loss of answers.

And until now, I haven’t even answered myself.

I still haven’t overcome my pride and admit my arrogance to tell myself that my life needed a whole new overhaul.

People, as far as I saw, find it hard to change. It is always easier to raise a barrier than to break it, though the phrase that I should go is: it is always easier to gain weight than to lose it. To lose weight is not exactly hard, in fact (as my brother had pointed out); all you need to do is just starve yourself. But there were a few things to vault over when you intend to lose weight; hunger, temptation and habit. It’s always hard to fight hunger, just as it is hard to fend off the dangerously sweet voice of temptation. Over the years you raise your mind with habit, and stays in the vicinity of the habit without will to leave.

Healthy people would tell you that you need 3 general things to lose weight; discipline, willpower and determination. Sadly, when your life revolved around hunger, habit and temptation, those 3 things either never come or come in short temporal moments.

Just like me and life.

When they say that it’s hard to break out of old habits, they weren’t just giving a half-assed attempt at philosophy. Discipline. Willpower. Determination. These never came to me when I do things for myself.

Senseless selflessness. Someone told me that sometime.

I’ve… known the lessons and what there is to learn. Just that I’ve never gotten around learning them. Like reading your course layout, knowing the chapters and topics but never studying them anyhow (it’s what I do, until my exams). No lessons learned.

What the hell am I playing at?