Life's Little Lessons Poem by David Self

Life is a master of comic timing—
Though somehow, you're always the punchline.
It hands you confidence at seventeen,
Then good judgment somewhere around forty.
By then, you've already texted your ex,
Bought the air fryer, and trusted Dave.
You spend your youth chasing money,
Your middle age chasing sleep,
And your retirement chasing the TV remote
You were sitting on all along.
The people who say, 'Money can't buy happiness, '
Always seem to have plenty of both.
The ones who preach, 'Live every day like it's your last, '
Still expect an answer to Monday's emails.
You finally stop caring what people think,
Only to discover
They were too busy worrying
About what you thought of them.
You eat kale to live forever,
Then get flattened by a rogue garden gnome.
Meanwhile, someone fuelled entirely by chips and stubbornness
Celebrates their ninety-eighth birthday.
Life rewards patience
By making you wait even longer.
It rewards hard work
With... more hard work.
The universe has a wicked sense of humour:
It gives us hindsight in high definition,
Foresight in blurry black and white,
And optimism just before the lesson arrives.
Still, perhaps that's the trick—
To laugh before life does.
Because if irony is inevitable,
We might as well steal its best lines.