Fail to Prepare, Prepare to Fail?

As I sat there over the weekend watching the box, a very old interview with Geri 'Ginger Spice' Halliwell came on, it was a T4 episode. As she was being asked questions by Miquita Oliver, she suddenly blurts out this well-known saying. However, it wasn't just the fact that she used such a burden of a cliche in an interview but instead the manner in which she blurted out this sage-like advice. It went somewhat like this:

"You know what Miquita, my granddad used to say to me: (Emphatic pause for appropriate gasp and prospective awe) Fail to Prepare then Prepare to Fail". Thanks for that one Geri like none of us have ever heard that pearl of wisdom before. Why don't you crawl under a rock somewhere and listen to 'Mi Chico Latino' on repeat and stay there for eternity and do the world a service. For the love of christ. Anyways, although completely out of context and irrelevant to anything being asked, Ginger got me thinking.

What if all our assumptions, aspirations and hopes for life never come true?

Indeed, there is every possibility that all the happiness and wonderful things that Disney, Nursery Rhymnes and bloody Richard Curtis have promised us throughout our childhoods don't actually come true and instead life is really just excruciating disappointment and one hurdle after another until the day we die. This is by far the most pessimistic I have been in a while but perhaps all of us are simply going through education or starting out in our prospective careers and learning our trades but we are all simply preparing to fail? Allow me to play devil's advocate.

There is definitely an assumption amongst the majority of young people that we are all going to settle down and enjoy marital bliss with our true love, have 2.5 kids, enjoy a fulfilling career and a big house somewhere in a county ending in -shire. Oh and how could I forget the pair of spaniels called sniffles and snuffles (okay, indulge me on that last fantasy!). This is what the majority of us are all preparing ourselves for, we're trying to secure this Jane Austenesque happy ending which in reality is more likely to be fiction than fact.

It could be that you are doomed to be that tragic hero in the story that is your life. Even though we all think that we are the good guy, the protagonist and perhaps the Prince Charming or Cinderella, this cannot be true for everyone. If the world is supposed to be balanced then exactly half of us are going to end up the good guy and the other half the bad. It's fact not everyone is going to live happily ever after unfortunately. There has to be a ying and a yang and for one half of the entire population there will certainly be some people who don't turn up to your funeral because it's raining outside.

Yep, that's right. Sorry people but these are the cold, hard facts and all we can do is go away and wonder if that bad guy is actually you. That mirror in the morning has suddenly got a lot more interesting hasn't it.

Bloody Geri Halliwell, better than Plato, Rousseau and Voltaire put together. Neither of the latter were in one of the biggest selling girl groups of all time either - bitch.