Simply Jonathan

The real world

I’m so fed up with the expression “the real world”. First of all, it asserts that there is such a thing as an unreal world — a fake world perhaps — and second, it has no defined meaning.

When I was in base school, I would be told that when I entered the real world, something would happen — the real world being high school.

Now that I’m in high school, the real world means either university or the job market.

And at my job, the real world means my spare time.

Seriously, can’t we collectively settle on calling the things what they are. There’s no need to hide them behind a meaningless term. There’s no need to talk about whatever state you’re in at the moment, as being something unreal. By doing this, we’re merely trying to strive for something in the future, removing all focus and positive things from our current position. That’s neither healthy nor very intelligent.

If you’re talking about anything other than dreams, fiction stories or the likes, you’re talking about the real world. Face it.

This is Simply Jonathan, a blog written by Jonathan Holst. It's mostly about technical topics (and mainly the Web at that), but an occasional post on clothing, sports, and general personal life topics can be found.

Jonathan Holst is a programmer, language enthusiast, sports fan, and appreciator of good design, living in Copenhagen, Denmark, Europe. He is also someone pretentious enough to call himself the 'author' of a blog. And talk about himself in the third person.