Grumpy Old Man - maybe we should not be whatever we want

I'm pretty sure I told my own children similar things, and many others were given similar messages, with the emphasis always on working hard to achieve goals.

And it's good to see the whole idea of being whatever or whoever you want is still alive and well.

It's just that the working hard bit has been forgotten.

Just the other day I received a friend request over social media from a person who was already on my friends list.

That's nothing unusual, because on social media you can pretty much claim to be anyone or anything you want, and no-one seemed to care.

You can even claim to be a major corporation, and send messages to customers, or a doctor or professor, giving your ignorance more weight.

But the difference was this request came from the supposed account of someone who happened to have died about 10 years earlier.

So it had me saying a few choice words to whoever sent the friend request, as well as leaving me puzzled about why someone would set their goals on becoming a dead person.

I know we're all going to get there eventually, but why be in such a rush to hurry the process?

Of course, we all realise the request was just the latest in an endless procession of people trying to scam everyone else out of their money.

Or maybe, just maybe, whoever it was had just decided they wanted to identify as this dead woman.

Because apparently you can identify as anything these days, which seems to me to be a completely flawed way of looking at the old "you can be whatever you set you mind to" advice.

Recently I was reading an article about a school overseas where some students had started identifying as "furries", and demanded the school install litter boxes in the bathrooms.

When the school refused, the students just went and did their business in the middle of the bathroom floor.

Is this what happens when you decide that objective reality no longer applies, that people can decide to identify as whatever they want and there is nothing anyone can do about it?

Well, I think I want to get in on this action.

I now identify as a super-fit 24-year-old male who is 195cm tall, has washboard abdominal muscles, and a gorgeous mane of long blonde hair.

And anyone who does not agree is inciting violence against those of us in the transchronos community, the transverticals, and the follically challenged.

Yes, how dare anyone point out the objective reality that I am short, balding and unfit, or that my aged and somewhat flabby body might not be able to do all the things my 24-year-old self-perception desires.

And when I keel over with all the symptoms of a heart attack when I try to run in the way any super-fit you athlete should be able to do with ease, well just realise that is only the pain of mother nature oppressing me