Decadence Isn't Easy, Is It?

One of my favorite songs is called Decadence by Disturbed. One day, instead of just listening to the sound of the song, I was trying to pay attention to the lyrics and a part that made me stop and think was, “Decadence isn’t easy, is it?” That got me thinking; is decadence really easy or is it not? I saw how it could go both ways. I looked up interpretations of the song online and I wanted to find the explanation of the song from Disturbed since it would be accurate, but all I found was what other people thought it meant. I texted Cha-Cha (this number you can text and they will answer pretty much any question) about what the song is talking about and they said, “It’s all about living the high life just to fill a hole in your life…when all it does is worsen your situation.” That explanation fit the lyrics of the song, but I was still thinking about that one part. So, forgetting that it was from a song, I decided just to focus on that one sentence and figure out if decadence is easy or difficult.

According to my little blue Webster’s New Pocket Dictionary here, the definition of decadence is, “a declining, as in morals or art.” Decadence could be talking about a person or even a country as a whole. Many people would say America as a nation is becoming increasingly decadent, that we’ve forgotten the morals that our country was built upon and that we are headed for trouble. It seems each decade gets more and more liberal and that we are digging ourselves into a hole we can’t get out of. In a way, you could say that decadence is easy. On a small scale, how easy is it to fall into a bad habit like being lazy or apathetic about what is important? It’s easy to be lazy and not want to work hard; sitting around doing nothing and sleeping is much more fun than doing work. A major factor leading to decadence is peer pressure. It is often very easy to give in to peer pressure because you don’t want to let your friends down or have them think you are a wuss or whatever. Not to mention, if everyone else’s friends are like mine, then they can be very persuasive. One incident of giving in to peer pressure can become a slippery slope and lead to something regrettable. In most cases, submitting to negative peer pressure means going against morals that the person has. They may compromise or even completely give in, but either way those morals are pushed aside for something that seems like more fun at the time. It may not be something big at first, but one small step can lead to them being in a position that they didn’t even think about being in. It seems like we as a country have our priorities completely messed up. Hollywood, in particular, says that in order to be a happy, successful person you must look a certain way, have a high paying job, and own certain clothes or cars. They say that you should go out and have fun and live life with no regrets. Many people listen and go out and do whatever makes them happy, not necessarily what they know is right. Songs and movies are becoming increasingly filled with negative lyrics and have a bigger influence on people’s thoughts and actions than they realize. It is easy to be decadent; it is often fun which is why we do the things we do when we know we shouldn’t. In some definitions of decadence, the word, “decay,” is used instead of “decline.” Typically, when something is decaying it is a slow process and decadence is no different. That’s why it’s so dangeous; we usually don’t see it coming.

The song says, “Decadence isn’t easy, is it?” It’s not. It starts off easy but when something is started, it usually has to be finished. There aren’t hugs and standing ovations and big smiles at the end either. What is at the end is often regret, stress, and sadness. When we do something wrong, we don’t always think about the consequences that will follow, but when they hit, they r usually felt pretty strongly. One reason that part of the song stuck out so boldly to me is because I can relate so well. For the first 16 or so years of my life everybody told me I was a perfect little church kid who never did anything wrong. The name that really got to me was when they said I was a goody-goody. I wasn’t, but that was what people thought of me. I know I shouldn’t have let what other people thought get to me but it did. I hated being called that and it just made me want to prove people wrong. That combined with peer pressure and not keeping my priorities straight turned me from being an innocent high schooler into a rebellious one. In about a year, I had become completely the opposite of who I was before, someone I never would have seen myself becoming. What is so crazy to me is how fast I became a different person. However, it wasn’t sudden; it was one action that lead to another and got me deeper and deeper in and you know what? I enjoyed it. I got into so many things I knew I shouldn’t get myself into but I did them anyway because they were fun and it felt good not being a good kid for once. They started off so small and insignificant (or so I thought) and snowballed into something much bigger. It wasn’t until right before I came to Tech that I started to get sick of it all. I was tired of the person I became; it wasn’t me. The things that I counted on to make me happy and satisfy me weren’t doing the job anymore. I felt miserable, like my life had no meaning or significance. I felt like I wasn’t going anywhere in life, like I was doing nothing to make myself a better person and be the person I was meant to be. There are so many things that I have done that I would give anything to take back because I am still feeling the consequences for what I did and will always feel them. I’m trying to turn my life around and I have come a long way in doing that, but I still have a long way to go. It sucks because I know that not all of it I can change. All I can do is learn from it and become a better person because of it. Even now that I have come so far in getting my life back on track, I still feel flashes of my decadent self flare up and I have to fight them off because I don’t want to fall back into being the person I was before. Decadence isn’t easy. It may start off that way but, in the end, it hurts.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wcP5yezHarw (the song if anybody wants to listen to it)

My Turn to Be Sick

All last week I was looking forward to this past weekend but it ended up getting completely ruined. I had planned on going back to Roanoke two weekends ago to see everybody and whatnot, staying at Tech this past weekend, and then, of course, going back home for break this coming weekend. Well, due to the fact that the only time I could sign up for a meeting for the paper was on a Monday, I was not about to spend my weekend at home writing a paper. So, I decided to stay at Tech that weekend to get my paper done and come back to Roanoke this past weekend instead which wasn’t a big deal. It just meant that I was even more eager to see my family and friends, and one more week of school made me excited to just relax.

Finally, Friday rolled around and I woke up all excited to finally get out of here and have fun. It was a beautiful sight when I saw our black Toyota RAV4 pull up to the curb outside Pritchard to pick me up. The only problem was, I was feeling slightly achy all over my body. Nevertheless, I just kind of blew it off and took a nap to refresh myself on the way back home. However, by the time I woke up when we pulled into the garage, I was feeling much worse. I took a couple Ibuprofen and went down to my favorite chair in the basement to relax and watch TV in hopes that it would go away. Two hours later, I felt like complete crap. My throat hurt, the aches had gotten 10 times worse, I didn’t feel like eating at all (which is a great way to tell if something is wrong with me), and I had chills that made me shake even when I was buried under blankets. I had been playing 360 but finally I had gotten to the point where I even felt too sick to sit and play video games. Mentally, I was trying to tell myself that I was fine because a couple of my friends and I were planning on going to Buffalo Wild Wings to hang out as planned. I didn’t come back from college to sit at home on a Friday night, so, telling myself that I was perfectly fine even though I also had to talk myself out of getting out of the chair, I slowly trudged upstairs to get ready to go. My mom asked me how I was feeling and apparently when I couldn’t even talk right because I was shaking and freezing my butt off that it was a sign that I was not doing so well. Needless to say, she did not want me to go out, one, because she didn’t want me to get my friends sick and two, because she said I would make my sickness a lot worse by not staying home and relaxing. I knew she was right but I was still mad about it. I moped back downstairs to my chair and prepared myself for a long, boring night. Around 9:30 I actually fell asleep but I woke up again around midnight. I wasn’t too pleased about that because that meant I would have a hard time falling back asleep once I took all the time to get upstairs and get ready for bed. This thought proved to be true as I didn’t pass out until after two.

Normally I sleep until 11 or 12 on Saturdays, but I woke up bright and early at 8 instead. I felt better but not nearly close to a full recovery. My aches and chills had lessened but I had added one heck of a headache to make up for them. Once again, I had already made plans earlier in the week to hang out with one of my friends but, once again, my mom told me I needed to stay home. Sadly, I texted my friend and told her I couldn’t hang out even though I was feeling a lot better than I had the night before. After an extremely hot shower to combat my chills in which the entire bathroom was thick with steam, I headed back downstairs once again to sit the day away in my chair. I put National Treasure in my 360 to watch to take up a couple hours and, once the movie was over, fell asleep for a good four hour nap. I woke up feeling somewhat refreshed and went upstairs to kill some time on the computer. Then, my friend, Josh, texted me and invited me to come over to his house and watch some football. I was feeling significantly better at this point compared to the night before, and, after taking my Linear Algebra quiz, my mom finally let me go out. It felt amazing to get out of the house and be around other people, and I was even up for playing some ping pong for awhile. I got home and went to bed fairly soon after that, but little did I know that I was in for another long night.

I finally fell asleep around 1:30 and around 3 o’clock I wake up and, for the life of me, I couldn’t go back to sleep. It frustrated me to no end, especially since I had to get up at 8 to go to church. Finally, around 5 I fell back to sleep and ironically, when I woke up, I was extremely tired. I’m just wondering why I couldn’t have been tired when it was 3 in the morning like most normal people. I decided to sleep in a little bit and miss my college class and just go to the service instead. After waking up for the third time in one setting, I took a shower to refresh myself. Once I got out, I felt great! All that was bothering me for the most part was my sore throat and runny nose, oh, and the fact that when I talked it sounded like I had a rather large animal wedged in my throat and my voice cracked every couple minutes. However, church went well, I didn’t suffer too much through the service, and it was great to see everybody and be out of my house again. Even so, my Sunday afternoon, yet again, involved sitting around my house just trying to get better. I did branch out and fill out some paperwork and balance my checkbook that hadn’t been done in two months for a little excitement. I decided to stay at my house for the night just so I could feel better for the upcoming school week. Surprisingly, I made it through the entire night without waking up at some odd our or not being able to fall asleep for awhile. This past weekend had a couple bright spots but overall, it was one extremely sucky weekend that was totally ruined.

Missing the Good Ol' Days

In middle school, nobody ever shuts up in class and the teacher always has to tell the room to be quiet. In high school, there is so much drama and cliques and people who think they are all that and rule the school. In college, there is just a whole lot of work to do and it never seems like you are never finished with your homework. Do you ever wish you could go back to elementary school? I’m not talking about just starting all over and doing it all again, but going back for a day or a week or maybe even a month. Looking back, elementary school seems like one of the easiest things I have ever done. Of course, it’s easy for me to say that now since I have seven more years of education under my belt since then, but I didn’t appreciate how relaxed and simple elementary school was until now.

As a whole, we as elementary school students were very innocent and, compared to how many of us are now, mature. We didn’t get online at urbandictionary.com to look up what certain dirty slang words meant; personally, I didn’t even know hardly any slang or cuss words when I was in elementary school. Nobody went out and got caught drinking or smoking weed and got arrested, hurting many chances of a good career. Nobody went around getting laid all the time leading to somebody getting pregnant and then they become the brunt of a lot of jokes around the school. Nobody (as far as I knew) got into any fights in the hallway because one dude looked at another dude’s girl the wrong way. Sure, we talked all the time, like in middle school, but usually we weren’t obnoxious about it and talked just to disrupt the teacher and make a scene. We just hadn’t fully learned that there are times to talk and times to be quiet. I mean, really, by the time we were in 8th grade we should have figured that out already so we didn’t have an excuse then. Most of us were on the same level. We were all trying to develop basic skills like adding, reading, and learning how to socialize well with each other. We had our own little elementary school problems to deal with but I think the majority of them were because we were still very young.

In elementary school, we were free to be our own person without anybody putting pressure on us to change or to do this or that; basically, it was very peaceful especially compared to high school. Even in middle school, most of the grade still dressed similarly so there weren’t as many “groups” of people. By the time high school rolled around, everybody fanned out into their own style or social group. There were the goths and the rednecks and the jocks and the preps and the outcasts and the emo kids and on and on. I am happy to say I didn’t really have a particular social group I was in. I was just friends with anybody and didn’t not talk to somebody just because they were part of this group or that. But anyway, in elementary school everybody was friends with everybody and we all wore our shirts with the trucks on them or the dresses with the fluffy stuff on the sleeves (I wore the shirts with the trucks on them just to erase any confusion). Along with not having the entire grade split up into different social groups, there was no petty drama in elementary school. In high school, even within one social group, one person didn’t like another because the second one dated the first one’s ex or because the first one was standing there talking to the second one’s significant other. There were “boyfriend stealers” and there was the “class slut(s).” (The grade that graduated ahead of me was nicknamed “Sluts ’08”. They were a particularly interesting bunch that’s for sure.) Gossip floated around the school constantly; one story could spread around the entire school within an hour or two. People would go out and do something stupid or try to act all big and bad just because they were in high school. Elementary school was free of all of that for the most part; we just enjoyed being young and being around each other.

Probably the thing I miss about elementary school the most was how easy it was. Again, it seems so much easier to me now that I have learned a whole lot more and have had many difficult classes, but considering we learned how to multiply 2 times 2 and studied that evaporation, condensation and precipitation (I used to think those were such big words) were all part of the Water Cycle, it’s hard to not say that was so simple. I used to hate coming home and having to do homework for an hour and not be able to play with my Legos for that much longer. Oh my goodness! How terrible that I have homework for a whole hour! I don’t know how I made it through elementary school with such a heavy work load. You know, if I had to learn something so simple like derivatives or how to find the arctan of something then it wouldn’t have been much of a problem, but since I had to sit there on the couch and figure out (without a calculator!) what 4 times 3 was, it was almost too much to handle. Plus, we always had to color and draw stuff; we were forced to walk single file to go to gym and music and art. You would think we were prisoners serving out our punishment! Then, there was the whole naptime issue. We thought it was such an ordeal that we had to actually be calm for once and lay our little heads down and relax. Now, I’m almost constantly wishing I could take a nap (I took two today and I could really go for a third right now). We didn’t have to worry about picking out our major and career or choosing just the right classes to take. If you missed class, it usually didn’t matter because all they did was watch a Disney movie or something and then have a party. Many times I have wondered how fast I could get through elementary school with the knowledge I have now. If I started at kindergarten and went all the way to 5th grade, I wonder how long it would take me. I’m thinking maybe a week or two. I can’t remember all of what we did and learned about but, I mean, it can’t be difficult. Sometimes I think that going back to elementary school for a little while would be nice. It would be an easy, peaceful break from the last 7+ years of school that I’ve been through.