when?

when do we start questioning good intentions? when do we become cynical and hardened? when do we suddenly look at our actions and realize how far we have lost our way? when is the point when we look up and not recognize the pustulent monsters we have become?

is it after the point where we actually say "i am now a grownup". is it when we say "this is the real world". where we realize "the real world sucks, is this all there is to it?".

or is it when we get back into the hamster wheel that is our lives and finally realize that we're going in circles, that nothing is changing but our own perceptions of the view.

or is it when we get dizzy and fall, then dutifully climb back on because we can't take it, can't take facing our own mediocrity, can't take facing the fact that we'll never make the difference we want to make, that we'll never be able to actually do anything in the real world, because the real world isn't some reality show, its not something that can be taught in four years of hellish classrooms, that it doesn't come with a manual, that no matter how many books you read or how learned you are, that no matter what your IQ or what your EQ, no matter what your parents try to teach you, no matter how much your friends try to council you, you'll never learn, you'll never get it, you'll never be able to really get it, you'll never be able to understand it, you'll never own it, you'll never find the permanance and the satisfaction because its very nature is impermanance and dissatisfaction.

we are all just transient expendible pieces of fluff, insignificant, pathetic and mortal.

we are all just bound and gagged in a cave, staring at shadows cast by life.

we are all just miserable, inadequate players, strutting and fretting our acts on stage, full of sound and fury, signifying a big fat spitting nothing.