The greatest lie ever told

I don't like talking to self-assured adults. They complain about their dull, banal problems and like to point out how much life experience they have to back up their arguments. What I saw back in Turkmenistan this summer was especially bad. The men took up the role of stoic-diplomat-on-vacation, walking around the pool with four cell phones allotted to their four different businesses while wearing very form-fitting underwear, and the women, when they weren't busy gossiping with each each other about what shade of beige is in this year (I'm dead serious), took precious minutes teaching their kids inverted morals to ensure that they grow up to be just like their parents. They all look hard for cliches and punchlines and idioms to appear intelligent to their aristocrat friends, whose brains just as equally epitomize degradation.

The greatest lie ever told is that life has meaning and adults know what it is. The problem is that by the time you realize this, it's too late: you've already spent your best years setting materialistic goals and slaving away toward a sugary future outlined by your parents (work hard in school -> work harder in college -> land a six-digit job -> success), and now you're thirty-something and no closer to enlightenment than you were ten years ago. Then you either end up with a special type of depression known as a mid-life crisis and desperately try to gain back lost time, or you can take your frustration out on your kids by letting the lie live on.

Does life have meaning, and does anyone know what it is? A popular opinion seems to be that we're brought into the world to find happiness. The problem with that theory is that it doesn't bring you any closer to being happy or to figuring out that which will make you happy. And if there are any adults worth talking to about this business, I haven't had the pleasure of meeting them.