Avenue Q: Sesame Street for College Students, Graduates and Young Adults.

"What do you do, with a B.A. in English?" says recently graduated Princeton. A college student facing a world that doesn't care for his feelings.

Avenue Q is a comedic musical that centers around the people on Avenue Q, as implied by the set design and some off-hand comments, Avenue Q does not have the same wealth as other people in the letters that came before.

What is my purpose?

The main theme of the broadway musical was on the examination of a person's purpose. At the start of the musical, we are introduced to a set of characters who have some sort of deficiency in their life. They weren't able to meet their dreams as a kid; they don't have a boyfriend; constantly bickering with his roommate; clawing her way despite challenges faced, only to be pulled down by her circumstance; a porn-addicted shut-in; and a person who was successful as a child only but was screwed over by his parents.

The idea of purpose was not hammered harder than in the story we go through with Princeton. There's no specific job lined up for someone like Princeton who perhaps took a degree without thinking about the effect of it.

The Realities of Life

Avenue Q is not shy about their critique of a world where we pay an exorbitant amount of money for a piece of paper, no life direction, and no job opportunities lined up. Of course, not all realities are grim, there are some humorous such as the internet-famous "The Internet is for porn." Noting the famous myth that 90% - 30% of the internet is made up of porn. Though not that big it still occupies a hefty 15% of the internet. But more than the fact that the Internet somehow has 15% of the Internet is the fact that the consumption of pornographic materials and steamy encounters between two people is normalized. (The question of whether or not they should be is of another time.) Reality isn't pretty but it is definitely true. Another is where they discuss how everybody is slightly racist. As they clarify, it's not racism in big decisions but rather certain biases people hold and stating that no one can be 100% not racist because of how our brain is wired. According to the musical, if we learn to accept that people have these little biases maybe we would actually get along instead of lambasting people who have little biases. The make it a point, as I am now, that they're not excusing white supremacists or people who prejudice other people drastically.

So what kind of big scheme do they have in store for us that we will go through the whole story? Well, nothing really. There's no big scheme or anything to address your own reality but there is still hope. Somehow.

We'll have to suffer, for now, we just have to keep grinding at it.

Avenue Q points out 2 things. It is a reinforcement of a famous quote by Gandhi: "The best way to find yourself is to lose yourself in the service of others." and that is hammered home in the 2nd act. When Princeton helps Kate achieve her dream. The next one is on what we can do as people currently powerless to do anything. Avenue Q, seeing the world for what it is today, to inform but also entertain people about the reality of the world we live in. The world is shitty now, let's face it. Soon enough, we can rise up to take control of it in our own way. We must seize the opportunity when it makes itself available to us. We cannot go anywhere being complacent but rather action is necessary, and not that action where you're supposed to like a post or share a post and a starving child gets fed. It's the well-planned and well-thought actions that bring the most good and the most change to a specific community. Such as Avenue Q in this example.

We have to start thinking of each other as a community. People who work together to achieve each other's goals while simultaneously discovering our own. This will never happen without action. Just because we face hurdles or problems (embodied by the bad-idea bears) doesn't mean we can't push ourselves back up and keep on fighting.

So what is your purpose? To take action and make the lives of the people around you just slightly better, in order to hopefully find your own purpose.

Just like my motto: "Salve, Salvando, Salvati." (Rejoice, for in saving others you save yourself.)

Peace, love, and more funny-because-it's-real songs.