For starters, just watch the music video. Normally these posts are all about the song itself, and don't get me wrong - we'll get there. But I spent enough time in film school to appreciate a good music video when I see one, and this one is simply perfect. It takes an amazing joke and then builds on it with style and humor. It avoids that painful one-note nature that's very easy to stumble into when developing sketch comedy, and above all it rides a fine line between parody and earnestness that gives the entire thing an irreverent charm, one that doesn't tear apart what I see as an inherently positive song. Because as mockable as it is, sometimes you do just want to be better. You want to work out, eat right, be nicer and happier and generally more social. And in today's exceedingly hip and ironic world, that's a vulnerable place to be.
Self-improvement is hard, not least because it begins with admitting you have problems, and facing them head on. It's an acknowledged fact that no one is perfect, that we all carry little deficiencies around with us everyday. But we don't think about them all that much - we don't keep them on the forefront of our minds, dwelling on why they're there and what we could possibly do to fix them. This is a good thing: thinking about your flaws all day will drive you mad. But it also makes it much easier to rationalize ourselves. "This is just the who I am." "I make it through the day, why change?" And perhaps most insidiously, "I'm happy this way." Working to better yourself begins with a fundamental rejection of these quiet little white lies we tell to keep ourselves sane, and as such it is terrifying - a head-first leap directly into the part of your brain you simply don't talk about.
But self-improvement is also hard because it's a long war, and one without a win-condition. Everyone you talk to about the whole concept will mention setting goals - giving yourself clear, delineated markers of progress. The reason this is so important is that without that action on your part, you'll simply be lost in the woods. Improvement is a relative concept, and only means something in relation to itself. You're trying to beat your own times, and continually up your personal bests. And beyond that, or perhaps even because of that, it's not something that you can just take on or off like a particularly fashionable jacket. It's a struggle, and one that doesn't ever end. This is why fad diets, weight-loss pills, or 30-day workouts simply don't work - there's nothing inherently wrong with the methods. They're probably quite effective during the periods you use them. But you don't just get better for 30 days and then STOP, and if you do you can't expect all that you've gained to stay with you. Your life, like a garden, requires constant attention and tending, not a handful of fertilizer when things look rough.
So why do any of it then? Why bother to face yourself and say, "Screw this, I can be better"? Well, there's really no good answer to that either. It's a personal choice, and many people live their entire lives with that attitude - "I'm fine the way I am, I don't need to change." I can only speak for myself, and what I believe is this: Self-improvement is literally all there is. From the cradle to the grave our life is, in theory, supposed to have a positive slope - a constant rise to better and better things. There are moments when you'll stall out, moments where you dip low again. But the simple fact is that when I wake up in the morning, I want each day, in some way, to be better than the one that came before it. That requires self-reflection, and more importantly it requires work. But anything less would be like standing still in the middle of a race.
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