Trampolines and bounce houses were the highlight of every childhood birthday party. You felt like you were a professional basketball player soaring towards the rim, an astronaut floating on the moon, or superman leaping tall buildings in a single bound. It was an exhilarating experience as long as you weren’t the unlucky soul who slipped and fell back to reality.

If you fell on the trampoline, it was almost impossible to get back up again. Normally, standing up isn’t so difficult, but the problem was everyone else around you would keep jumping. The elastic ground beneath you continued to constantly heave and shake, so no matter how hard you tried, you couldn’t regain your balance to stand back up. If only someone would stop jumping to help you up, the floor would stop moving and you could get on your feet again.

But all the kids around you keep jumping, trying to go higher and higher, unsympathetic to the fact that they are simultaneously keeping you down. Who knew this traumatic childhood experience would be a perfect metaphor for adulthood? It seems that everyone around you is so concerned about climbing the social or corporate ladder that if you stumble and fall, they will keep trying go higher and higher even if it means keeping you down.

If you still can’t get up and lift yourself from the cringy situation of being stuck on the trampoline floor, stay there. Nothing ever matters, and your status or well-being won’t affect the fact of your imminent death. Just be glad that the road is rocky and the ride is not still. Stillness can make a happy monkey slit his throat. Oh, this has gone too far. We really need to wrap it up, yup.