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Youth is Wasted on the Young

There's this guy I know. He's relatively bright, at least from an academic point of view--perhaps to his own detriment, since he has found that he can often slide by just on the aura of his intelligence. But he has no hint of a work ethic, no inkling of personal responsibility...he's every inch the slacker.

He recently found himself in a life-changing situation of all his own making, mostly because of his inability to act. And he's blindly taking down most of his friends with him in the process. You see, he's a fucking karmic black hole--any help rendered merely boomerangs into more problems for the good Samaritan who offers it.

He's 23. He's married (or at least until his wife divorces him, which seems iminent). He's slothful to a fault, driving all who try to give him advice to the brink of madness. In short, he's yet another masters candidate turned video store employee waiting to happen.

Whoops, it already happened.

I made the mistake of once offering advice to this young wastrel. He returned the favor by not only ignoring everything I told him (which I expected), but then pulled me into his own, fucked-up situation in a particularly tactless way that only the truly personally incompetent could manage. My dear wife, who continued to see potential in him, continued to offer aid and comfort, not realizing that she had become an Enabler of the schmuck's shiftless ways rather than an antidote.

Finally, some of his friends apparently staged some form of intervention--at least on one part of his life. But I suspect that he will soon run upon reefs elsewhere.

It is for wasted youth like this that they invented the French Foreign Legion (or at least some form of voluntary military service). I suppose there's nothing wrong with my acquaintance that a few years spit-polishing parade boots wouldn't cure. Or something, anything, that could take over his life completely and give it some sort of fucking urgency. The Peace Corps, union organizing, a presidential campaign...something that matters, for God's sake.

We all waste our youth in some way. But some waste it more utterly and without any redeeming value whatsoever. And my acquaintance has managed to make me not care where he lets his run down the gutter; my only regret is that there are so many who could have used his youth more wisely.

Abandon All Hope, Ye Who Bookmark Here

Welcome to the relaunch of Hell is Other People. (Well, maybe "welcome" is a bit too strong of a word). For various reasons (most of them technical), I flushed the old weblog. We'll be resuming our all pain, all the time broadcasting now.