You know what isn't fair? Life. You look it straight in the eye and it glares back. You think you've found out the answers to it, you think you've found the secrets that so many others have failed to discover. You're wrong.

The nasty surprises of life are almost as nasty as life itself can be. Its the feeling of stress, the feeling that you've accomplished something and everything is okay, when that little something comes back and bites. It doesn't hurt. No, its worse. It slowly attacks you. Slowly, but relentlessly. You can live normally, sure, but that little thing is always there to haunt you. Enjoyment is not possible in these terms, because you know for yourself that this tiny bite will soon become the jaws of despair.

The worst feeling in the world, however, is probably the feeling of helplessness. The knowledge that something horrible is going to happen -- that its happening as you are sitting there, idle. But there is nothing you can do. The sickly feeling of watching your new bike being run over by your parents' car backing out of the driveway, when you are all the way in the house where nobody can hear you. The grotesque moment of dark surprise when you remember homework you forgot to do, with five minutes to the bell to go to that class. The knowing that things are going on everywhere around you, things that you can't possibly control, but things that will have horrible consequences to those who refuse to listen.

These secrets you thought you had discovered -- times of peace, short cuts, ways to make things all work... they are not secrets. They are mistakes. They are traps that everyone must fall in. Mistakes you are fated to make -- when you try to avoid them, this is even worse. When you try to ignore them, they come back with greater strength. We try as a society to warn others not to make the mistakes we have. We try, but in the end we are hypocrites to it. We disregard the warning of others. And so this cycle continues, making the mistakes of others, and them making the mistakes we promised we would would never make again. We won't listen -- they won't listen. But why would we when its so much easier to deny the possibility of anything bad ever happening to us? History repeats itself, my friends; and we're just standing back and letting it.