2001-10-11 - 12:01 p.m.
Those of you who have been through calculus, and know those "how much pressure is against the bottom of the right cylinder" problems where you have to divvy it up into slices and everything, you guys will understand this analogy beautifully. The rest of you, I think, will get the gist of it.
Life is like that right cylinder. But instead of filling it up with water, it's full of stress. Now, wherever you are in life, you're at the bottom of this cylinder, pumping stress up into the container, which gets taller and taller so as to accommodate all this pressure. At the beginning of life, for instance, there was no pressure. You ate, slept, cried, shat your diapers, and even those were taken care of for you. Then you had to be potty trained. This was a relatively minor pressure. Life was still great, you just have to remember not to piss yourself. Then, you start Kindergarten. You have to learn to make friends. So your current pressure is equal to how hard it is to make friends, PLUS the stress right above it in the container, which is not to piss your pants. Think about this. As you progress through life, your responsibilities increase. Doing homework, getting grades, dealing with girls, avoiding heavy drugs, driving, getting into college, not flunking out once you get there... All these pressures are stacked up on top of eachother. So by the time you're 19, you're dealing with the pressure of not living on your own, which compounded by having to get good grades, resisting excessive drug use, dealing with parents, doing homework, talking with girls. And at the end of it all, when you think you can't handle anymore... You still have the added pressure of remembering not to piss your pants.
I've devised my own units of pressure for this particular analogy. As follows.
littlebit= smallest amount of pressure.
annoyingamount= 10 alittlebits.
largerchunk = 10 AnnoyingAmounts.
helluvalot = 10 annoying amounts.
ungodlyfuckload=10 Ahelluvalots.
As an example, when we're the little kids, we basically have to make it to the bathroom in time, not piss off adults, and not trip over ourselves. Each one of those is littlebit of pressure. As we get older, we actually have to do homework and learn things. That, with all the littlebits of pressure you've accumulated by your lifestyle thus far, equal a few annoyingamounts of pressure. Adults roll their eyes at teen angst. They shouldn't. Because with the teen years come Girls, driving, getting into college, even more social skills than we needed as 5-year-olds, drugs, sleep-depravation, and raging hormones. EACH ONE OF THESE is AT LEAST 1 helluvalot of pressure. Now imagine all the annoyingamounts and littlebits stacked on top of that. You're already under A lot of Ahelluvalots of pressure. Now enter college. Congratulations. You're at the bottom of a bigass tank, which means you have at least an ungodlyfuckload of pressure bearing down on you. The sad thing is you can't drain the tank from the bottom. That's right, boys and girls, before the big stresses go, the minors have to go first. That's what happens to old people. They can't deal with it anymore, so they have to stop worrying about not pissing themselves.
Wow. I think that's the best analogy I've ever put together.
-Alex
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