StrongArm Series #1 (Idioms) - TBAF v NIF

I’d always found idioms weird. Moreso when I found a game where I was supposed to match up idioms with their conflicting counterparts as a kid.

You see, I always figured idioms were written by all-knowing sage people who lived in the clouds. Turns out however, that they’re often written by average schmucks like you and me, except they’re lucky enough to have a few more people gobbling up their words.

So I figure one of them has to be right, right? Between a pair of contradictions, one guy has to know what he’s doing while the other one either (at least) saw life the wrong way, or (at most) monumentally shit the bed.

Well, in the maiden edition of The StrongArm Vs. Series, we’ll be answering just that.

As a quick intro, the StrongArm Series will be covering conflicting life views, ideas and ways of living, and resolving them in a friendly, humorous manner. If I feel any sensitive matters will be discussed in any edition, then I’ll be sure to put a warning at the top (though that’ll be very, VERY rare).

Okay! So without further ado, let’s jump into our first topic.

In the blue corner, we have “The best things in life are free” (TBAF), weighing in at hippie levels of optimism and all round love for the world, and in the red corner we have “Nothing is free”, a dark broody little guy who’s realistic as hell.

DING DING DING!

Breakdown

TBAF seems pretty self explanatory. Life is a barrel of good stuff, and although much of it comes at a premium, the really dope stuff is free. So you and Bezos may not have the same bank account balance, but you know that the stuff you DO have in common, it’s the best.

So let’s analyse the different views you could see that. Or to put it plainly,

HOW MANY DIFFERENT SHADES OF BULLSHIT IT IS

Ha! The best things are- no! * SOME*, of the things? Sure, maybe you’ll have me sold on a good day, when I’m feeling unnecessarily wholesome and free from material stuff and shit. But the BEST??

Nyoooope.

Now, let’s look at it in some different angles, angles other than “har-dy” and “fucking-har”. It might help to look at what we could assume was meant by the best things. From my view, and the view of my very small and far from scientific research pool, it’s stuff like hugs, love of your family, fun times with loved ones, that kinda stuff.

Huh.

So, I’ve never been what I would call poor. My family has perfected the art of middle class, smoothly transitioning from “I can see the rich line” to “we don’t have to eat that many meals, right guys?”. Most of the time, we’re at a comfortable “better not fuck up, or else”.

But with the stories I’ve heard from those less fortunate than me, it can rarely be said to be “family fun times” when you’re having an honest conversation about just how bad begging could be. Sure, you can share a few laughs to dull the hunger, but that’s far from sustainable, and it’s ultimately difficult to hug people when they’ve passed away because they couldn’t get proper healthcare.

Whereas on NIF, we have…well we don’t have much. They believe you don’t have anything free. At all. I don’t think they particularly limit themselves to an economic standpoint. For example, you can get upvotes on Steemit without paying for it, but you have to work to build relationships and create reasonable content, so basically that's how you pay for it.

Even the hot-dog guy who gave you a free hot-dog out of the blue? Well you paid for that with all the other hot-dogs you got, and your charming “keep the change” personality. The homeless guy you give money to gets it by, well, being homeless. That's a full time job right there.

168 hours a week. That's primo work ethic right there

However, they still jump the gun a little. Air is free, so is water if you go to the right sources. So there’s some stuff that is free, just, you know, not he best. A

Final thoughts/Winner

TBAF takes a monumental beating, losing out literally in the beginning. It also doesn’t help that it’s on the optimistic side which, though sometimes a good thing, often isn’t because it doesn’t prep you for the hard fall if (when) your ideals fall through.

NIF on the other hand,essentially keeps a blade on your throat through most of your life, and while that’s not exactly a fun way to live, it allows for some genuinely positive feelings when you realize it’s not all bad.

SO without further ado, the winner is…

NIF!!!

Selected for good old fashioned truism, and leaving room for things to get better instead of savagely worse. I find myself a slave to the idea of hoping for the best and expecting the worst.

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Hey guys! Hope you liked this little spin-off. It's something I've been planning on kicking off for a while, although under a different head. At a point I figured why not just do an armchair mash-up so, here we are.

Welp, see you next time.

All photo credit to Pixabay.