On January 11th, 2016, I started a daily practice of writing a joke meditation of the day called Cracked Pot Meditations. I was still recovering from the treatment of cancer, and I was having very challenging cognitive issues, so I chose just to put something simple and easy to write every day. Posting it to the blog allowed me to have some accountability. Some of those meditations were poorly written and unedited. I have gone back and begun editing these and adding an illustration, starting with the April 27th meditation. I hope you enjoy.
Meditation for June 3rd
You Don’t Know How To Do Anything
There was a time when people knew how to do things. Grandpas all over the country used to be able to fix anything. People knew how to fix their own cars and houses, but now people either pay professionals or just work their way around broken things.
Sometimes we adapt to the things that break. “You just have to press down and hold it for it to work.”
The old people talk about a time when America was great, and in some ways, they are right, but mostly, they’re full of shit. Back then, things really sucked. In the way they are right, people knew how to do things, and now people are incapable of doing things.
Here is a list of things you don’t know how to do:
Social situations
First Impressions
Yes, that’s right. You need to know how to make a great impression on people you are meeting for the first time. This could be a friend of a friend, a possible date, a possible boss, or a potential customer, but making a first impression goes a long way toward ensuring you get in everyone you encounter’s good graces.
You don’t do this because you’re you. You’re so special that they just should accept you as you and if they don’t like it, they can fuck off, right? It’s because you’re scared and don’t know how to do this. You don’t look them in the eye, don’t shake their hand, and never remember their name.
Persuading Others
How do you persuade someone you are right or that your opinion should be considered? By using techniques that are tried and true. Listening, discussing, using facts, and standing by your conviction without anger or fear.
You don’t know how to do this because you yell, attack the person personally, and troll their Facebook with memes and gotcha banter. You never actually win except in your own egotistical, isolated world. Learn how to make your point without burning bridges.
At the end of the day, walk away knowing you stood your ground, and it doesn’t matter if the person changed their mind.
How to Communicate Assertively.
This is the most essential skill you don’t know how to do because you either react to everything or hide in fear. Don’t beat around the bush and don’t be aggressive, but say what you mean to say. You don’t have to be some thug who is “keeping it real,” and you don’t have to be someone who hedges everything they say with maybes, probablys, kind ofs, sort ofs, I feel likes, sorry to say, you know? I could be wrong. Just say what you need to say.
Instead of saying, “I think I kind of sort of need to go soon, like maybe now, I don’t know?” Say, “I need to leave.”
Learn How to Apologize
Yes, most people don’t know how to apologize because we have been told we are so special and unique. How could a special and unique person apologize?
Get over yourself, say you’re sorry, and name what you did wrong. Then, get ready to amend the wrong by making it right.
Learn How to Get Along With People
Yes, a lot of people are terrible, but you are also terrible. You can get along with everyone if you put in any effort. All you need to do is be genuinely interested in someone, remember their name, ask them questions, and make them feel important.
Listen, if you are a normal person, you will have to mix with people you don’t particularly like. We can’t just evade the assholes of the world for our comfort, so we need to know how to get along with people. You never know when someone who sucks will become helpful in the future. The best part, all you have to do is listen to them!
You don’t do that because you’re too busy trying to prove a point or explain yourself to anyone who will listen. You talk too damn much.
Career and Jobs
Learn Basic Time Management
Things take a certain amount of time, and it takes a little work to ensure you start and end tasks at certain times so you aren’t rushing to get them done and running out of time.
You don’t do that and don’t know how to do that because a job’s time is in the way of your own time. Try being worth what you’re being paid. When you screw up, it’s not going to bother the bosses, it just comes downhill to your coworkers and makes their lives a fucking nightmare.
Goals
Are you at a job and always want to get off early, but you also always complain about not having any money? It’s time to set some goals. Is the goal to make money or to always have free time? The two usually don’t work together, not in this completely fabricated economy forced on us by the police and militaries everywhere.
Goals are important to keep you on task and so you don’t waste your life fucking off.
You don’t know how to do that because you only think about right now.
Shopping
Learn How to Pick Produce
How do you know if the melons are ripe or which tomatoes to get? If you understood how to pick produce, you’d actually be eating better, like you always say you are going to start doing. But you never learn how to choose produce because it’s always easier to eat out. I’ll buy this pizza pocket from the gas station, and maybe tomorrow I’ll see what this kale is all about.
I like to squeeze my produce a little while emitting a loud moan.
Learn How To Make Eggs
You can fry, scramble, hard-boil, and even poach eggs. Learning how to cook eggs a few different ways will help you move on to cooking other things, like potatoes!
Roast a Chicken
It is very easy to learn, but you won’t because when you think about cooking, you’re too hungry to hang out in the kitchen for that long, so you go off to tacos. You’d save so much money and eat like a king if you learned to roast a chicken.
BBQing and Hamburgers
Learn how to grill. You would become a much-loved summer friend if you knew how to operate a grill, but you never did because you would rather go to McDonald’s and get a quarter-pounder with cheese.
Remember to wear some tight jorts when flipping the burgers.
Learn How to Roast Vegetables
Like chicken, you’ll save money and eat like a king, but you don’t eat any vegetables since you are a thirty-something kid.
You know you should stop listening to pop music and switch to Air Supply when you start enjoying roasted brussel sprouts.
Clean Up After Yourself
Yes, cooking is fun, but you must still clean up. You can’t just pile dishes in the sink and never do anything about it until there are flies and a smell that raises the dead.
Home Ec.
Learn to Sew and Mend
Yes, everybody should learn to sew. If you can mend a shirt and sew the buttons back on, you can have it for so much longer.
But you don’t learn that if you just go and buy new shirts. Trends are more important than saving money and respecting your own property.
Unless they were the Gilded Age, most people made clothes from curtains and flour sacks for most of America’s history.
Car Maintenance
How to Jump a Car
If your car is dead, could you jump it? Do you have cables? Do you know which one the black wire goes to and which one the red wire goes to?
No, because you have triple A.
Once you learn how to jump a car, you will have the basics to extract information from a person.
How To Change A Flat
Yes, you may need to get out of your car and change the tire. What if you are in the middle of nowhere, and zombies might be heading towards you and your car with a flat tire? Can you change the tire before your brain gets eaten?
Learn to Parallel Park
Especially if you’re going to be a city slicker, you need to parallel park—extra points for parallel parking on a one-way street on the other side of the road.
You never learned because you grew up somewhere with huge parking lots in strip malls everywhere.
Home Ec. 2
Learn How to Type
Jesus Christ, man, everything is on a computer. You will always need to write emails and memos and what have yous on the computer, so don’t be a hunt and pecker, learn to type.
Learn to Create a Budget
Don’t just spend money until it runs out; have a GoFundMe to save you from financial ruin. Learn to live on a budget. Learn to shop for food and not buy Venti caramel soy lattes from Starbucks every day. Have some financial goals instead of maybe camping this summer, because you are homeless.
Learn How to Protect Your Computer
Either you need to avoid all the adware-infested sites that show Daily Show clips or a woman wearing a Chewbacca mask, or you need to learn to protect your computer from adware, spyware, and viruses. Also, there is no such thing as safe porn.
You never learned this because you know nothing about maintenance and don’t respect your own property. Gratitude is an action word.
Learn First Aid
Do you know CPR or how to deal with medical emergencies? The older you get, the more you will find that knowing a little first aid will be helpful. Do you even have a first aid kit?
You never learned any first aid because you expect that you are immortal and that medical issues happen to other people.
Hope you don’t mind watching people die in front of you as you stand there helpless.
Life
Learn How to Dance
Knowing how to dance is a great way to improve your physical and emotional health.
You don’t know how to dance because you are soooo scared of looking stupid.
Learn a Musical Instrument
It is nice to know how the music you like is made. Learn the piano or the guitar. Teach yourself songs and learn how to compose your own.
You never learned because new music taught us that knowing music doesn’t matter when it comes to making profitable pop music.
Learn a Card Game
Just be ready to throw some cards if you spend a few years in prison. Poker is a classic game for social reasons, and Bridge is a great game to know for intellectual reasons. Magic: The Gathering doesn’t count.
Learn a Sport
Gym is too hard to keep going, but enjoying a game or a sport is a great way to get out and move around. It involves problem-solving, mind-body reaction coordination, and just plain fun competition.
But you never learned any sports because you were too cool. You didn’t like sweating. Instead of doing hard work to enjoy one or two more years maybe living, have fun.
Home Improvement
Learn to Use Tools
Learn how to use the different tools. Once you know what tool you need, you can fix anything.
You never learned because you can call someone to fix it or ignore it.
Learn To Hang A Picture
Yes, you’ll need basic skills to hang a framed picture on your wall. This is way beyond thumbtacks and tape. Just making the picture straight will take enough skill.
You never learned this because you just had a huge poster of Tupac taped to your wall, and you never thought anywhere you were was permanent. Everything, including buildings, is disposable.
You Should Learn How to wire a House, Plumbing, drywalling, Framing, basic electronics, and other skills needed around a house.
You never learned any of that because you are a privileged little brat who never had to do anything for yourself.
Someday we might face the apocalypse, and you won’t be able to Google anything. I will eat you as I drive around the wasteland in my supercharged Volkswagen Scirocco blasting Slayer and return to my powered, plumbed home protected by a wall and a crocodile-infested moat.
Survival
Create a Fire Without Matches
Yes, you might get stuck in the woods without a book of matches, so knowing the power of fire will get you out of any survival situation.
You were too special to go and learn how to be outside or too good to be sent to an outdoor behavioral treatment program.
How to Grow Your Own Food
Growing your own food is a great hobby. It is cheap, and it is fulfilling to eat something you grew.
You wouldn’t know about that because you buy stuff out of cans from a store and eat it because you’re hungry, with no pride in what you eat.
There are many other things I could probably put on this list, but you won’t really take the time to learn any of these things because you only think about now and not really about the future. Plus, reading is hard. Before you know it, you’re forty-something years old and you don’t know how to do anything for yourself. Being an adult is hard unless you teach yourself how and ask for help.