Blog the f**k It Life
Got an experience you’d like to share with your fellow Fuckiteers?
Send your anecdotes to Marieke at...
isaidf-it@hotmail.com
..and we'll publish it here.
The Union of Fuckiteers
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Marieke's Blog
The Lazy Generation
6th November 2012
Yes, I am perfectly aware that my peers and I around the globe have been dubbed the ultimate by-products of technological advancement. We are the internet- surfing, couch-potatoeing lazy generation. The image of the 17-year-old boy sitting behind his computer in his pyjamas, engaged in some online virtual reality, while stalking his crush on Facebook and munching on a pizza he just ordered on the internet does not scream motivated professional. Fair enough but perhaps we have been too hasty in condemning this state of vegetation. Perhaps we need to tap into our inner adolescent slob and unleash a new suave very “Fuck it” attitude.
It has actually come to my attention here at university that people my age are actually very interested in a spiritual path that abandons the torment of unnecessary meaning. Current professionals often reassure us, that if we work hard and stay focused, we might still be able to squeeze a career out of the apparently sparse professional pool of opportunities. They empathetically claim that they understand how hard it must be for us to compete with that raging competition bombarding us from all corners of the globe, while we are left with minimal assurance of our hard work even being worthwhile. This “dire” situation leaves us with two options: either we engage in the dog-eat-dog mentality, or avert this state of Catch-22 cannibalism where we can only choose to eat, be eaten or auto-digest, and say (here it comes), “Fuck it”!
And it seems that many of us actually have. Students at various universities have grouped together to establish meditation societies. They meet up regularly and share stories that relate to their personal wellbeing, not just their career migraines. They even say, “Fuck it” to their academic work-load sometimes and go on meditation retreats with hoards of people all committed to putting their own present state of Being, over a fear of the future or the meaning we have attached to academic success. All of these young people constitute the so-called lazy generation (although they seem to be working a little too hard to qualify such a statement), but they are consciously so. We are actively choosing to say, “Fuck it” to the stream of concerns that we could have. The “Fuck it” revolution seems well underway as the future generations become educated in this spiritual path, a course that seems only to feed on the pressures of meaning that surround us. The lazy generation will reign supreme.
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Marieke's Blog
Honey, I’m home.
21st September 2012
Looking back at what I was writing 5 years ago used to make me laugh. It always seemed melodramatic, fragmented and incomplete. So its a sobering moment when you look back again a few years later at the same early adolescent scribbling and now see a sense of self at least equal to, if not beyond, the present. How much of ourselves do we lose? More and more I realise that we spend our lives just trying to recapture the present-ist and outward-looking mind of our childhood selves. I lived back then. I didn’t feel obligated to achieve a career-defining feat every day or to reach any self-postulated milestones. I didn’t attempt to define or confine myself; I just floated through my days. I was happy in a way that I can only strive for now.
If you’d asked me back then what I wanted to do with my career, I would have given a succinct answer, then followed it through to the end and would have been content with my choice-“woulda coulda shoulda” is a concept that seeps in through a surface cracked my life experience much later.
Since reading about the Fuck It Way, I increasingly get the sense that a force is pulling me towards a particular course. Perhaps every deviation we make from it is corrected through a process of self-questioning and frustration- these feelings could just be part of a process of fatalistic correction pulling you back towards your path. Perhaps there rests an intrinsic sense in each of us of our personal utopia, towards which we will always gravitate. John certainly recognises this in his ‘take your hands off the wheel’ argument when it comes to plans and goals-our lives will progress in a certain direction regardless of what we do, so let it go.
This idea might be comforting or dismantling. The Fuckiteers tend to see it as the perfect alibi for every Fuck It opportunity we choose to seize, because “Fuck it, we’ll end up on the same course eventually anyway”. We will always return to that same stable equilibrium. Our smaller choices, experiences and outside influences will all misalign us from time to time but when crisis strikes and you experience emotions of sheer desperation, it also leaves room for realignment.
I often picture a wavering stencil of myself descending back into its stable shell every time I experience a moment of dissatisfaction, like a stabilising isotope-its just part of the process of working towards an inevitable, and satisfying state of personal balance.
The Fuckiteer can be at peace in the knowledge that we are destined to return to the comfort of personal equilibrium: to enter the door after every long day at the office and announce in pure exaltation, “Honey, I’m home!”
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Marieke's Blog
Life’s a joke.
26th July 2012
It’s been a serious couple of weeks. I’ve had to tackle some issues concerning my self, my health and my education. It’s at times like this that my ‘fuck it’ perspective tends to go out the window. It caves under the burden of importance that we have placed on decisions and life-choices. It’s easy to become barricaded in and wallow in a fear of fatal decisions, losing sight of the ephemerality of every moment.
But ‘fuck it’ holds the answer, once again. This time, I found it in the laid-back tone adopted in John’s book. This does more than just give us a speedy and not-too-taxing summer read. It ensures that the whole endeavour, even that of saying ‘fuck it’, does not become another area of needless agro caused by excessive and obsessive human categorisation and labelling. The key to the philosophy and applying it to your life is to take a healthy distance from your concerns, your pleasures, and your thoughts. And we have ourselves a very nifty vehicle for doing this: humour.
When stress and tension seem to be surfacing again, a little relativizing power is always welcome. I am all too familiar with Sartre’s ‘spirit of seriousness’ that he ascribes to the human condition. We all pursue our lives with such fervency, in fear of the alterative meaninglessness. I realise at times of clarity like this that perhaps I haven’t mastered the ‘fuck it’ way as wholly as I believed. So I’ve found a little aid that breaks saying ‘fuck it’ into digestible chunks at times of despair: the age-old spoonful of sugar we call, ‘the joke’.
Humour, I find, offers a little release from the shackles of meaning, without leaving us in the infinite no-man’s land of completely letting go. We get a moment to take a step back and realise a the ridiculous intensity and/or unrealistic ambitiousness with which we tackle everyday pursuits. Questions that range from Why am I incapable of mapping out the exact course of the next 10 years of my life?, to What should I eat for breakfast today? Whatever it is, and whichever question seems more prevalent at the time, they are ultimately just fleeting problems that do not need to be solved, that don’t require superhuman abilities of preconception or clairvoyance. And b that humour also has the very comforting additional benefit of solidarity. We appreciate that we, as mankind, and all that exists within the universe, are in it together. We are all part of a vast breathing, fertile, and ever-changing universe. We are all equally paranoid and in need of a ‘fuck it’ solution and we can all get there by laughing in our masses until it doesn’t feel scary anymore.
So that’s what I’ve been doing. It’s perhaps something we all innately do anyway but making a conscious effort to laugh instead of cry has helped me tackle my immediate problems with comic ease. Just say, “fuck it”; indulge and add a spoonful of sugar to the mix and you’ll be laughing yourself to an easier time.
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Marieke's Blog
The power in two words.
22nd July 2012
No prescribed path is perfect. Especially not when put to the test within the unpredictable landscape of a human life. Even the Fuck It Way has one blatantly obvious flaw; one that is also the key to unleashing its power. The bold title to the even more daring philosophy is completely transparent and also perfectly reflects the fundamental clash that resides between the valiant Fuckiteer and society. “Fuck”, a word that bears all that anarchic impetus that John discusses in his book, is the inevitable cause of a lot of pouting, disconcerted responses and defensive behaviour. The problems we face in reconciling the public with a word that bears so much impropriety is the very same one that we face when tearing open society’s thick skull to a life that is just a little less concerned with “rude” and a little more articulate in “free”.
Clare wrote into me about her experiences last week (please do read her inspiring post below) and painted a great picture of the responses she received after sharing some snippets of the book with a crowd of enraged catholic-school teachers on holiday. I, personally, am unable to fully relate the power of Fuck It to many of my family members due to their religious background that is wholly unaccepting of any use of so-called profanity. The phrase that is THE rescue-ladder from desperation for so many is also the very hindrance that will always restrict the philosophy to a very specific niche of people.
So what is it that draws these particular people in? Why are we not warded-off by a phrase that we have been raised to consider an inarticulate slur to fill a void in our vocabulary? It seems that some intrinsic quality already deems us a little indifferent towards our societal conditioning. Anarchy was already brooding somewhere at each of our cores.
So what is it that my fellow Fuckiteers and I all have in common? John, Clare, and the masses of other converts (…and this is where I make us all out to be incredibly desirable) were all desperate (You’re welcome). We had all hit a personal low. We had all just faltered in various areas of our lives that had been loaded with our own projected self-worth. When meaning collapses and you are left with the infamous black hole, that absolute aimlessness, we truly become the famine-stricken willing to scrounge any scrap of sustenance from the dumpsters. Not that I’m comparing the Fuck It Way to rotting garbage (…oh, I’m on a roll). What I mean is, that we, in our desperation, had relativized the importance of social propriety already. We’d seen the flip side of the serious daily pursuit of meaning and rather than fill the gap with more transient and unreliable substance, decided to reposition ourselves in relation to this state of affairs.
In the past, people have repeatedly turned to religion when at a point of desperation. Here, instead, some of us turned to a spiritual way that places the responsibility of change on our own shoulders. So, desperate we may have been but empowered we have become. This is why we aren’t shaken by a word that bears energy of this magnitude. This is why someone who has burdened his or her existence with the conventions that often accompany a religion will feel giddy in its presence. I’m not launching an atheistic attack here; I can’t find it within myself to deny the existence of any deity and I also believe that the Fuck It Way is entirely compatible with religion. All I have amongst my ammunition is experience of daily life and a taste of liberation, and I’ll choose for the latter any day.
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Clare writes to Marieke....
7th July 2012
Well, where do I start?! My name is Clare. I am from Dublin, Ireland. At this present moment... I have decided to share my F**k It story!!
I have been trying to sleep for the past two hours, tossing and turning in sticky Barcelona summer weather. So I turned my laptop on and decided to look at the Fuck It website. I am due to go on a F**k It Week in Italy in September. I noticed the blog and thought 'Fuck it', I can't sleep anyway, so why not write?!!
I love the whole philosophy. My favourite part in the book is the Judas, Jesus love fest part!! It did take me a good year to decide to read the book, however I haven't looked back since! * Well the odd hiccup here and there, but hey we're human!! Or are we?!...
OK, so rewind 3 years ago... Summer 2009. I had just turned twenty-five. I was settling back into life in Ireland after travelling for 15 months (a 'working holiday' year in Australia, which consisted of basically drinking Thursday through to Sunday and the odd Wednesday in-between. Hey, I'm Irish - that’s what I thought we were meant to do!! I enjoyed every minute of it at the time.
I decided to go on holiday with my friends. I had been under pressure at work so I needed a break. Looking back now I was basically being bullied in the work place (what doesn't kill you makes you stronger). Holding together a dead end job. The money was bad, the environment was bad and I was working my ass off and getting no thanks for it. At the time all I wanted was support and appreciation. I can see now that I was looking outside of myself for praise and love, when really whatI was searching for was really always there.
On that holiday I got a phone call from a colleague saying that we were not going to be paid. I was waiting on my hard earned wages for my well-deserved break!! This was the beginning of my downfall (my view at the time).
I became internally very angry, upset, resentful, nervous. I changed jobs only to become even more stressed-out, doubting myself all the time. I lost about 4 stone in weight and a lot of my hair. I was twenty-six and on the verge of a major breakdown. I went without sleep for 13 nights - well maybe a hour a night - that’s with sleeping tablets. The following year is a bit of a blur, but I basically stayed indoors for nearly a year. In my bed. My parents were devastated, my sister was devastated. What had happened to their beautiful daughter and sister?
My mother once described me as the light of her life. My nickname as a child was "no time to lose" and now a wreck sat in front of her. Nobody knew what to do!! I didn't know what to do, I couldn't do anything I had lost all sense of myself. In the book John talks about the pain of being alive. Well I felt that pain and at the time I described it as torture. All my life I had been active, bubbly, friendly, caring; people liked me... and now nothing. I searched everywhere for help all over the world. I paid out about €3,000 to healers, never mind the doctor's bill, and it resulted in nothing!
Then I found books and spiritual philosophy!!! And support from a counsellor, medication and some wonderful people. Relaxation, diet, exercise, support and sleep are all very important to me. Now my whole life has changed, I still suffer from occasional anxiety and have to take an anti-depressants (for now). However now I am happy, I have got in touch with the real me. My inner child shines bright and people notice!! It feels good
I now live in Barcelona. I work here and on Monday I move to my own room in a shared flat!!
I have said...
- Fuck it to Ireland (I love my country but enough of the negativity, we all know too well that the economy is in a bad way)
- Fuck it to hating myself.
- Fuck it to criticising myself.
- Fuck it to people who hold me back.
- Fuck it to searching for an answer.
- Fuck it to the Psychiatric system in Ireland.
- Fuck it to needing a man to make me happy.
The list could go on!!! Oh and I haven't even made it to the retreat yet!!!!!!
We don’t care if they’re big, medium or little f-k-its, they’re all the f-king same to us: Email your experiences to isaidf-it@hotmail.com and we’ll post them on the website!
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Marieke's Blog
To University and Beyond
8th June 2012
So here’s a post for all those Fuckiteers struggling with university, or any other so-called “life-changing decisions”.
I mentioned in my last post how unhappy I was at my university, to the extent that I decided to say, “fuck it” to the one I was at altogether. I disliked the course, the lifestyle, and the general mentality surrounding higher education in the UK. It turns out that my career path too presented just another opportunity to abandon something that made me thoroughly unhappy. The perceived expectations that we adhere to here are yet another cluster of bigoted burdens that can join our growing number of fuck-it fugitives.
I made my university choice under the impression that England, with its academic prestige, would be the place to propel me into a successful career. I just accepted the ubiquitous belief that it was the place to go, disregarding what I really wanted from the experience. I’d also been told that English would be a great “solid” foundation subject for any line of work, because it equips you with “analytical skills”. I went on to discover that this seems to have become the standard pitch for a lot of degrees; vague terms that aim to condense employability into a few concrete prerequisites, all of which are obviously the direct product of a university education. But the question that began to niggle at me, as I became increasingly drained and unhappy, was: do I really need to be bored shitless for three years while we study something that causes me stress and anguish, in order to acquire “analytical skills”?
I remember a particular moment with my study group that made the situation very clear to me. We were procrastinating because none of us were in the mood to get down to another racing discussion on something like Chaucer. We began talking about our potential career paths and why we had chosen English as an undergraduate degree. Not a single person put their motivation down to a love of literature. There’s something wrong here. How can you be studying something that specialised and not really love it? I was guilty too…
This meeting took place at a time when I had hit a wall with my degree. I hated it and was going to say, “fuck it” to the whole thing. So I decided to share my revelation with the study group, in the hope of perhaps gaining some support or, in typical over-confident adolescent fashion, believing that I would inspire the masses to follow suit. Predictably, this is not how it went. John mentions in his book the resentment and irritation that your Fuck It attitude is likely to trigger in people when they sense your, what to them seems, unattainable liberation. And this was the exact reaction I received from my study group. I could no longer shelter under the solidarity that is bred by shared submissive sadness. I was free and that pissed them off. Luckily, I said, “Fuck it” to that too.
But I’m not here to provide a political commentary on the British educational system, or even to have a rant about a few former classmates. I’m here to talk about how this experience led me to stage another Fuck It revolution within my life, and to show you (using a very snazzy analogy) how the degree I eventually found provides a great model for Fuck It students in our University of life (We were always too cool for school).
I found the solution to my university uncertainty in the two aspects of Goals and Plans that John describes in his book (Page 104 for you eager Fuck It students). Firstly, the positive application of concrete plans that focuses purely on what you want (disregarding any external influences). And then the other side of the coin, the one that should give you the incentive to Fuck It to fear, that says that everything will happen in due course anyway, regardless of how much we grasp for control, make the “right” career moves and stress out along the way. It also demonstrates that very specific plans can actually limit your susceptibility to new, even more positive, opportunities. So a “fuck it” to goals and plans, with a side serving of “fuck it” to fear, and we’ll be fully fuelled-up to overhaul those authoritarian educational institutions. The answer, condensed down into one wholesome Fuck it stew, is a focus on our personal and present desires. Learning to make decisions that satisfy us RIGHT NOW.
So I learnt to forget grand schemes when applying to university. Teachers, parents, and the institutions I was applying to; they’re all caught in a (sometimes unconscious) consensus to support the current educational order (it’s all very Big Brother). Although individuals probably mean very well when they advise you, universities still ultimately operate as businesses. There are documentaries (check out College Conspiracy), inspirational speeches (I loved Sir Ken Robinson’s Changing Education Paradigms) and even slightly sci-fi conspiracy theories (I’ll steer clear of giving an example here, do not want to step on any toes, even if it would be a very Fuck It –thing- to- do) that all share a mutual recognition of universities’ private agenda. And, to be fair, these institutions are catering for large batches of students who all have individual agendas that could never be satisfied by a standardised system. But from our perspective, this manifests in us being bombarded with incongruent accounts, of which universities have “great reputations”, which courses are “reputable amongst employers”… This manic white noise around the whole thing ensures that our own core desires become hazy and difficult to identify where it is so important to do so. Only one sentiment stands out loud and clear: that you’re screwed without a university education. University has lost its elitist stigma but common mentality has now shot in the opposite direction, where even if you’re not interested in any of the courses out there, it’s irrelevant, as long as you put in those three years of academia. You need to have proven that you are able to tough it out through thick, thin, and deliriously boring.
The Fuck It way shows us how this attitude of mindless conformity actually distracts us from our real interests and defers the experience that we might naturally gravitate towards anyway. Maybe those gruelling years at university will pass and you’ll fall into the exact same job, crisis or realisations that are necessary to power you into the next phase of your life anyway. Maybe all those few years of study managed to do is make you miserable in the interim.
So, following my struggles, I chose the “Fuck it, I’m taking my own route. I know that, statistically, whatever diploma would benefit me more in whatever industry, but this is what I feel like doing NOW and this is what will make me content with my life AT THIS MOMENT” –way. And if you phrase that more concisely, you’ll sound less like you just spent half your student loan on drowning your sorrows at the bar.
I realised that UK universities seem to place emphasis on completing “core” (i.e. what to me seem classical, imperialist, out-dated) subjects before allowing you even some degree of choice. And this set-up is the perfect analogy for what I was putting myself through. I was forcing myself to slog it for a several years before ALLOWING myself the freedom to choose my own path. Well, Fuckiteers don’t stand for this. So I went and found a Liberal Arts course that allows me to decide on which direction I want to take my education at a given moment. It seemed like the ultimate fuck it degree, considering that freedom was even explicit in the title.
And I really do feel liberated. I said, “fuck it” to subjects that caused me pain, a mentality that didn’t suit me, and am continuing to say, “fuck it” throughout my degree in order to navigate myself towards my “true calling”, or even just a job that I’m happy doing. And this model applies for the Fuck It-student, too. Just say, “fuck it” to agro every day and sculpt your own path to personal satisfaction. That’s how we’ll get our money’s worth out of the glorified library membership that some universities have become (I couldn’t resist another little side-jab) and any other life-experience, too. If Fuck It has taught us anything, this approach will lead to a greater volume of more apt professionals who found their professional enlightenment by abandoning the dead weight of a dead system.
Got your own story? We don’t care if they’re big, medium or little f-k-its, they’re all the f-king same to us: Email your experiences to isaidf-it@hotmail.com and we’ll post them on the website!
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Marieke's Blog
Your F**k It Feedback
2nd June 2012
Our first Fuckiteer to brave the public platform has risen tall and proud. Here’s what she wrote:
“So as your fellow Fuckiteer, I'd like to share some of my experiences too!
I said “Fuck It.” to a group of friends that didn't make me happy;
I said “Fuck It.” to an unhealthy relationship.
I said “Fuck It.” to everything else my last year of high school and it turned out to be the most amazing year of all!
I fell out of my Fuck It state of mind, though, when I joined university and experienced similar frustrations, but luckily, the Fuck It philosophy is one that's in your control.
Slowly, I'm getting back to saying “Just Fuck It.”
Just goes to show that it’s never too late to re-immerse yourself in the Fuck It way. Even if we lose sight of the principles that have resolved our predicaments in the past, we can always re-assert our anarchic approach, say “Fuck It”, and smooth sail our way back to good times.“
More on universities coming up!
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Marieke's Blog
How I unleashed
the Fuck It forceFinding the book and getting hooked.
28th May 2012
Now that I’ve appealed to all of you for your stories, it seems only fair that I share my own. So, let me introduce myself: my name is Marieke and I’m a fuck-it-aholic.
I graduated from school a few years ago and fell into a bit of a hole. I suddenly had no deadlines, obligations or concrete duties to fulfil. After a childhood of conforming to expectations and throwing myself into schoolwork and friendships, I suddenly had a moment to reconsider what I, myself, really wanted to do. I had been forced to cut ties with my place in society and was thrust into no-man’s land with no social identity. “Freedom” might be how most of you would describe this situation and the perfect moment to immerse myself in a Fuck It revolution. But as much as I, theoretically, saw it this way too, I could not put my liberation to good use. I wanted so much and had a sense of entitlement to it but I just didn’t what steps to take so I started my journey of just fucking things up: getting stuck in Australia with no money, a break-up, dropping out of university, getting fired from my dream internship it had taken me all year to find and confronting attached disappointment in myself after everything I had strived for seemed to have fallen by the wayside.
When I reflect on this whole escapade now, I mostly see how much I constantly caved to people’s expectations; how this confused me so that I was neither able to enjoy the present or pursue any type of future. There were just too many factors tugging at me, or that’s how I perceived it anyway. I submerged beneath the gulf of these expectations, until my former vivacious self was just a speck of light in the night sky (yes, we’re getting poetic now). I felt alienated from everyone, I disliked myself and I was rotting in that paralytic state John continually describes in his book: being discontented but not doing anything about it. In addition to this, I was (and most likely still am) a dramatic adolescent who attached too much meaning to every aspect of her life, probably even more so than your average dissatisfied individual. This, altogether, manifested in a not-all-too-fun state of mind. But (I do realise that this all sounds like one of those diet promo videos) then I found Fuck It, the ultimate spiritual way. I was in the midst of a disheartening job-hunt, wandering the streets of Amsterdam by myself, when I gravitated towards a Waterstones. I caught a glimpse of the uncompromising Fuck It title on a shelf and dove in there. I had just said, “fuck it” to my job hunt and now said “fuck it” to my student-drop-out-financial-situation and bought a copy, read it, and felt my spirits lift. I began to experience surreal moments of spontaneous catharsis. I would be sitting in my garden after having gone running for the first time in weeks because I had, and still have, said, “fuck it” to my running scheme, and burst into tears. It was a calm release of long-mounted tension. It felt amazing. This kept happening: while I was watching TV-shows, making breakfast, even when things went wrong. Every aspect of my life now posed the possibility for a pleasant purging of stress.
I am continually discovering that the aims that I had attached meaning to in an attempt to define myself or give my life direction were actually not what I wanted at all. They had often been determined by other influences and were causing me pain. Things had not been working out because I was making decisions that were rooted in a place of external pressure and I couldn’t, ultimately, follow them through. Goals become incredibly difficult to achieve when your motivation is not really your own. My initial free-fall into a freedom that had just felt shackled to the outside world had transformed suddenly into a warm pool of peace, happiness and possibilities. I was learning to shrug off the things that I didn’t want, and to pursue the things that I, myself, genuinely wanted. This breeds confidence, stability and love. I feel this strong pulse of loving energy (or libido, as John explains in his book): a lust for life that surfaces increasingly often. I try to take a step back from my problems now in order to view them as a separate entity and not part of me. This puts everything in perspective. I still have struggles, insecurities and issues but am learning to let them do whatever they want while I do whatever I want. And the Fuck It way has given me the concrete tools in the form of pragmatic advice to do all of this.
Some people question whether this whole “philosophy” is not just a superficial way of relaxing and that there is no intrinsic or “spiritual” shift when you say, “fuck it”. I don’t understand this criticism. Considering that relaxing alters your entire perception of your daily life and that you just being is spiritual in itself, how can you compartmentalise the two? They are symbiotic. And, fuck it; it just works. That’s why I want to share my own and others’ experiences of the Fuck It way. Although I hid it well, I used to get tangled in potential future problems, trapped in expectations, and tied to past issues. Now I feel that I have a life-long answer to living, not just existing. In typical Fuck It fashion, my eschewing control eventually gave me the very influence over my life that I’d previously sought. If that’s not worth preaching about then I don’t know what is.
End of Fuck It propaganda. (But really, it’s all true).
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Marieke's Blog
Let anarchy run wild
24th May 2012
Any reader of The Fuck It Way has probably experienced its benefits in their personal lives. You may have found, as I have, that it seems to infiltrate your mentality almost spontaneously. I immediately began congratulating myself when caught in the act of saying “Fuck it” to a scenario described in the book, and this bred an ever more present Fuck It state of mind. I’ve also heard similar reports from family, friends and strangers. We all just needed a little loosening up. After all, we run an excruciatingly uptight civilisation in the West and there’s clearly a high demand for a radical extremism that only shatters personal boundaries.
But what happens when we actually try to apply these principles in the public sphere? Can there be negative repercussions for our social circles and surroundings when we struggle to break through to a “higher spiritual plane”? Does saying, Fuck It ever do any more harm than merely making acquaintances thoroughly uncomfortable with the void of obliterated neuroticism that can no longer bulk out the conversation?
What about your professional environment? Can the Fuck It way be applied when you have the relentless pace of the professional world with its multitude of manipulative colleagues, parasitic assistants, uncompromising bosses and deadlines to reconcile yourself with? Is it possible to say Fuck It to all of this when the rent will still be due when you wake up from the sweet ecstasy following that almighty Fuck It to the system? Unfortunately we can’t all just retreat to a F**k It Retreat in Italy for the rest of our lives. No, the majority of us will never completely cut ties with the world of work and commitments but would love to reach an improved balance of anarchic release and societal conformity. This raises daily challenges as we manoeuvre ourselves through a hostile world that has not warmed to our chosen path (that’s exactly why were are trying to become detached from it). This world is resentful, suspicious, and critical or has a misconstrued perception of the Fuck It way. We are bound to be thrown off course from time-to-time.
But, as always, fuck it! Accept it and move on. And lets make it a little more fun and all do it together. Lets get political here and unite. Lets share our failures and successes in this virtual pat-on-the-back-experience that we will all realistically need on occasion. In short: lets take over the universe (technically, we already have in one universal sense of Being) and all say, “Yes we fucking can!”
