We’re (Really) Not Doomed

Sometimes when you want to say something right you get a lot caught up in how to say it and a little forgetful of why. I remember last December I stopped writing about why because the only thing you ever learn outside yourself is who, and what, and how. I don’t think there’s anyone or anything, event, person, history textbook, quote, movie, speech, book–anything–that can teach you why things happen. That’s the reason people don’t get along, the reason we’re so bright and violent and strange. By some quirk we’re stranded here on a planet, like a tiny tiny island adrift in the Universe, like Lord of the Flies applied a billion times over. And whatever quirk it was that landed us here didn’t find it necessary to allow us to learn from others why things happen.

I live in a country unlike any others, a democracy–but that’s not why it’s different. And no matter what anyone might think of its people–stupid, clever, dirty, glamorous–the idea won’t ever be anything but beautiful.

A lot of the time people get caught up in what they think they should want that they don’t often realize what is, in fact, that they do want. I said that in my AP Lit class and I’m not taking it back because it’s so often the case. It’s a sad thing to think we, as people, want things only because other people want them. But I think if we all knew what we wanted, the world might be peaceful or violent still but it’d be a whole lot less interesting. What else do most people live for, but to figure out what they live for?

I don’t hate a lot of things. I decided a long time I wouldn’t hate anything not worthy of hating. I wouldn’t “hate” that pair of shoes with that dress. I wouldn’t “hate” seeing that girl with that guy. And most especially, I wouldn’t “hate” that man for blowing all those civilians to bits, because I can’t say I understand him, and until I understand something, I refuse to hate it. Hating something you don’t understand is the same thing as fearing it, just as time consuming and twice as needless.

But I hate, more than anything, the people who say the world’s doomed. It feels of late as if everything is aimed toward convincing the general populace of that particular, unteachable why. The media isn’t to blame–at least, not all the media. That’s like saying the Middle Easterners are to blame; who exactly are these Middle Easterners who have so insinuated themselves in our society that they turn our very fears against us? Please, do not be afraid to name names. Are not the spoken fears that less fearful for being recognized? By all means.

No, I think it is the American Dream. Take that simple phrase to mean what you will; personally, I believe it will mean a different thing to anyone you ask. I believe it is the pursuit of a great distant perfection that leaves us here. More often than not we are searching for ideal, and when we find nothing so close to perfection who can we blame but… the media?

I think once upon a time there was an American Dream. And that dream was a dream of immigrants and refugees and colonists, misfits, miscreants, misanthropes–all. It was the dream of all the people the world shook off and called “unneeded”, that there could be a place where they could achieve the greatest longing of the human being–to realize what it is we want the most, and take it for ourselves. Once upon a time the American Dream was that if one worked hard and studied hard, there would never be someone else in the way to say no, you can’t be this. You can’t be a doctor; a lawyer; a nurse; a teacher; a politician; a president. No one in the world, our tiny tiny island, could say you can’t be who you think you want to be. And when you finally achieved that goal, there is no one to say, you must continue to be who you are because you aren’t allowed to just change.

I think that’s what we all want; to be able to change. It’s not the ideal of perfection–hell, most people wouldn’t even be able to describe “perfection”, we’re so far distant from it. But I think, given a chance, a real chance, anyone would always want the ability to choose to change above an ideal we can’t scarcely fathom. I think that’s the American Dream right there.

But something happened. And I think it’s still happening. I think somewhere along the lines we grew too used to being able to choose so we started looking for someone to choose for us. People think choice means freedom, but it doesn’t. Choice means having to be responsible for whatever you choose. If there’s something most people avoid like the plague, it’s responsibility. And in America there is no lack because there’s no convenient dictator on whom to place the blame. The choices we make are our fault. Somewhere along the line we forgot that.

When? It wasn’t a moment. At least, if it was a moment, there is no mention of this instantaneous certainty in the record books and the fading minds of the oldest yet living. Somewhere between the first choice made by the first colonists to now, we have realized, finally, what it means to be able to choose.

Sounds like obscure nonsense, I guess. How can the ability to choose have any affect on the economy? My dog’s dead, my wife might as well be, my brother’s fighting a war against fear (note: fear; as if by some chance in the Middle East a stray bullet might strike the heart of fear and forever banish it from the hearts of men), and what am I to do when I can’t pay taxes? This can’t be the government the Founding Fathers envisioned! This country is corrupt–

No, not really. Your dog’s dead because things die. People die. Your wife’s gone because you blamed her for a lot of stuff that was your fault and she blamed you equally as much. You’re brother’s shooting at ghosts because we’re a nation of action–we can’t stand around when there’s fear in our minds and do nothing. From the very start we were motivated by fear and this new war is no different. This isn’t the government envisioned, no. But who would have thought, the day the first ship full of scared shaking settlers set off across miles and miles of unpredictable, unforgiving water to an equally unforgiving land, that one day there would be a country where those who have the will and vision to change, can, and do? Who would have thought?

I don’t think we’re doomed. Far from it, I think we’re melodramatic and silly and cynical all at once. And I’d hate to be any of those because they’re best suited to Shakespeare and Hollywood, not life. There is absolutely no problem anyone faces that cannot be solved. Whether people have the guts to man up and solve it–whether they want it to be solved–well, that’s another question. One I think I’ll ignore for practicality’s sake. We aren’t doomed. The colonists weren’t doomed. Our soldiers aren’t doomed. We’re not doomed. We just choose to believe it, for now.

Nothing We Can’t Solve (I Swear)

I suppose everyone and their mother has an opinion on “Why we are where we are” or whatever people are calling it lately. But I thought I’d just point out a few things.

First of all, I have absolutely no experience with politics of any kind. I am not a historian, a teacher, a politician, a diplomat, so technically anything I say could be a load of nonsense. But then if you think about it, the majority of the people out there claiming to have a reason for the economy, for the war, for every controversy ever to make it on the front page of Us–neither are they. “I can have an opinion,” a lot of critics say. True. But it’s not an opinion when you scream it like the truth.

I am so sick of people who have no idea what they’re talking about preaching like they’ve researched and considered and discarded other perspectives to get where they’re at. I have no problem at all with critics who have done all these things; if you can ask of other people the same questions you ask of yourself and at the end you still believe what you set out to question, you’ve got yourself an honest opinion. And even then, even when it is obvious to the person with the opinion that this is wrong or that is right or whatever they think, it’s still an opinion.

I received an email an hour ago (chain mail) from a teacher ranting about Obama’s conduct in foreign nations. About how Obama is now, apparently, the cause of all our nation’s ills.

To be honest, it’s not like I didn’t see that one coming.

I think Obama’s campaign managers did an excellent job of convincing a large amount of people that one man can change and heal all their ills. The bill is two months overdue? Stimulus from Obama. Lost your job to the recession? Jobs from Obama. Want to go to school? Racial-segregated scholarships from Obama.

I mean, sheesh it’s like people were expecting Obama to pick up the dry cleaning and wipe the baby for them. So no, it does not come as a surprise when a lot of people are very unhappy that none of these things are magically changed simply because a proactive black man is president.

Me? I think he’s doing a good a job as anyone else could when put in the same situation. But those fabulous campaign managers only made things harder by promising an all-encompassing and near-future change to a rather too-hopeful (read, gullible) population of hard-working single moms and poverty-level, welcare families.

So I have a right to my opinion: true. I even have a right to express it on some ridiculous obscure corner of the Internet where it will no likely rot for a year before being deleted when I clean out my accounts for college.

But you don’t see me writing a letter and circulating it on the Internet in order to garner sympathy for my rant. And that’s not the first case. It’s probably not even the thousandth!

I don’t want to scream my opinion. In fact, I’d rather not scream at all, and I’d rather no one else did either. Nothing gets solved when people are too close-minded to even consider other possibilities, to wait for reasonable explanations and take appropriate action when presented with a lack thereof; but not until all possible reasons are considered. Isn’t that what diplomacy is supposed to be about? Democracy? Finding the best path for the most amount of people and doing what can be done for the rest?

I was wrong when I said nothing gets solved when people are close-minded. Something gets solved, except by that time it’s degraded into mindless violence and mob-mentality, solved with guns and slogans rather than reason. What do people think caused WWII? Hitler didn’t command a loyal army because the people were open-minded.

I believe a lot of the problems we have are not rooted in million-dollar CEO bonuses or an ineffective president. Abortionists and activists and animal rights groups and rich people aren’t the cause of the economy and war and all-around uselessness of circular political debates. I don’t believe that a single person can cause more misery than people allow him or her to cause. I think every person who ever felt fear for their jobs, fear of higher taxes, fear of losing something, found a culprit (in one way or another) in the rich, in the terrorists, in the poor and the smart and the black and the white. In the president and the politicians; the cops and the students and the guy walking his dog who never talks to anybody. I think we’ve been afraid for a long time, and I can’t say when it started because I’m not a historian or a politician; I can’t. I just know what I see and I read on chain mail letters and the news. I just know that when good people get afraid they do bad things, they get scared, and that’s why we are at war with each other. That’s why we can’t pull outselves up–because we’re trying to pull ourselves up by dragging each other down.

It’s saddening. Everyone I know has an opinion about everyone else. And I have not yet met someone who could honestly say, “I think the other side has a point. And I’m willing to make a concession” because they think making concessions means surrendering. Except it doesn’t.

My teacher asked us once what, if we could say anything at all to the president, what we would say. I thought about it for a while and I came up with the conclusion, after I found and rejected a hundred questions and comments and criticisms, that if I had a direct line to the president, I would have nothing to say. There is nothing I could say that would change a thing, because nothing a single person says has any power but what the rest of the people ascribe to it. There is no problem, I believe, that cannot be solved by stopping screaming and starting to listen.

I suppose it’s a good thing I would have nothing to say, after all, seeing as I’m not exactly best buds with the pressie.

Red and Green

I’ve been thinking about perspective, human perspective: you know, how people see the world and how it colors what they do. I’ve come to a few conclusions, mostly opinions but conclusions in my own mind (there it is, the first hint of bias.)

Firstly, there’s color. Not color as in bias, but real color. When people see green, they associate it with cool and earthy and natural. Some people. Others see green and think, mold. Ugly. Grass. Someone could say that a paper is red and another person could say it is red but what if they’re not talking about the same red? What if the pigments we see are different, between individuals? And as children we’re taught that this is red and this is green, and some thinks it’s ugly and some think it’s brilliant. Is this the child’s opinion? Yes. But based on what? Perhaps when we think of our favorite colors, we’re all thinking of the same color, but it’s perceived differently from person to person. Maybe lavendar is the one color that draws all people but it is passionate in the minds of some and cool in the minds of others–sometimes it’s green and sometimes it’s red, but who would realize that anyway?

But, you might think, people associate feelings with colors. People almost always think red is fiery and green is cool. But a child, looking at these colors, doesn’t think that. He or she thinks red is red and green is green, and isn’t that color so beautiful? He or she doesn’t even know why. As they grow up they learn to associate ferocity with vibrant colors, and if their favorite color happens to be red, they associate ferocity with their favorite color. And if their favorite color happens to be green, they begin to associate all things green with coolness. Colors are not innately anything. They don’t feel. People make them feel, the same way people feel for the dead and people feel for ideals. People assign them feelings and children learn those feelings because that’s what the mass mind believes.

Secondly, there’s religion. A wide spectrum, to be sure. We have the naturalists and the god-worshippers and the God-worshippers–and all the shades between. We have the sacrifices and the traditions. Human sacrifices, sacrifices of coins, sacrifices of time and thought. People sacrifice their thoughts because something in this religion drawn up by men catches their fancy, and they give up a part of themselves to make room for the thoughts of the religion’s creators. Not all religions are like that. But most are.

I was reading East of Eden and there’s a quote that struck me, that “It would be absurd if we did not understand both angels or devils, since we invented them” (Steinbeck 132). And the devils and angels we see, how can we be sure they’re the same devils and angels some other poor soul down the street sees? Most certainly, the angels and devils of the rich man are not the same angels and devils as the poor one. Unless, of course, the poor man was once rich and now blames those celestial beings for his new existance; but even then, the extraordinary is tinged differently where power is concerned. Money shades it green and hunger shades it red. Whichever red or green the individual sees, who can say, but they won’t be the same red or green that every person sees, and thus the greatest sin and greatest gift will be different to one who would give all to be free than to one who would give all to be full. Or even, most especially, to one who would give all to be loved.

I think people find in religion different things. Like people might see different colors, some find in religion a type of spiritual freedom; to others, a cage. I won’t say which I favor because that would only be my perspective, and I’m trying my hardest not to be biased (it’s impossible, but I try). On the subject, I’ll only say that I have the feeling if I did not read, I would believe more in the God of Christianity. Who can say, though, perhaps reading is what brings some people to believe in God.

Lastly there is human nature. People are not perfect, but there might be another in the world that the individual finds more perfect than him or herself. A person might find perfection in beauty or perfection in simplicity, in elegance, in high cheekbones and bronzed skin or in pale complexion and rosebud lips. Who can say? Like red or green, perhaps we are all looking for the same perfection and find it in different things.

People need to know that perfection exists because it’s in their nature to hate what they see as imperfection. The mass mind that we hear so much of, the collective press of the minds of the people who influence us most–be that our parents, our lovers, our friends–helps to define what is perfect but it doesn’t explain everything. There are people in the world who can shrug off their conditioning like a coat when it doesn’t suit them anymore. Those are the people who succeed the most, the ones who start businesses and get rich, or paint inspirational pieces and die alone. (Success, too, is just perspective. If a person is happy, is not that person successful? Though where that leaves the majority of modern workers and businesspeople today, I don’t know.) And those who can break new ground are the trendsetters, but they always end up belonging to the mass mind because where they will not accept the conditioning of the majority, the majority allows itself to be conditioned by them. So in the end it doesn’t matter if they’ve thrown off tradition because traditions will follow in their wake.

Granted, this doesn’t include the hermits and those who die too young for others to remember as being anything other than human. Yes, that’s right–anything other than human. Because many people will agree that it is human to be imperfect and strive to correct those imperfections, making those who accept and even pander to their faults…inhuman. What it means to be human is only an opinion. Anyone can say people need food and shelter, but do people need love? If so, what kind of love? The love of a man or a woman? Or the love of nature? The love of elegance? The love of perfection?

If you think about it, you’ll find a lot of what you’ve accepted as fact is only perspective. When you have something you love unconditionally, you can’t imagine another not loving it as you do because your love is just that–unconditional. But that sort of love doesn’t come around too often. I think it’s a lot like being crazy. If you love something unconditionally, you don’t realize there’s any other alternative. When you’re crazy, you don’t know you’re not normal.

I suppose even if you could prove people like colors because they appeal to the same innate instinct, it wouldn’t make much of a difference. They’d still like the same colors and hate the same clothes and love the same people and hate the same people. I guess philosophy’s a lot about realizing the reasons behind what exists in theory, and a fat lot of good it does to change the hearts of people. You tell them the Muslim loves the same color as they do, it does not change their view of that Muslim. You tell them the child can read better than they can, it does not change their condescension towards the child. Philosophy only changes what people let it change.

I suppose that’s what blogs are for. Mine, anyway. All the things that have no impact on my life are the things I love best to speculate over, because it makes no difference to me. I always thought it was a better alternative to talking about my life. Too many people love doing just that. I think it’s rather tacky unless you’re James Bond or Oprah. Then it’s just interesting.

But who am I kidding? Maybe someone out there loves to read rants about soccer or politics. I wouldn’t know. The mass mind tells me these things are boring, and who am I to say otherwise?

One Can of Beans, No Tear Gas

Apparently the US is one step away from annihilating itself, but truthfully, when are we not?

My state’s got a deficit that even Donald Trump would be hard-pressed to fix. And you’d think in the midst of a crisis all the opposing parties would go–oh my gosh we need to team up to get us out of this! According to my newspaper, if we don’t agree on who’s getting cut this year, we’ll have a “state shutdown.” Which, if you ask me, is a little dramatic. I have a feeling our neighboring states aren’t just going to sit there and watch us fall into anarchy.

I read the list of proposed cuts by the Republicans, Democrats, and then our governor. I know right? There’s the parties and then there’s the person we elected. Though if you want to be technical, we didn’t elect her. She got the position after our elected governor ran off to play with guns and bombs, despite the fact that she’s probably never held a pea-shooter in her life, not to mention AKs and poison gas. But what’s a little thing like experience got to do with it, anyway?

That was a sidenote. Ignore.

So I was reading through this list of proposed cuts, and it struck me that the Democrats had some decent ideas. Instead of lumping the cuts on one or two agencies, they’re spreading the love. But then I noticed the Republicans also had some good ideas. They’re thinking the government’s going to gyp us on stimulus (which is definitely not out of the question), so they’re planning for the worst. Murphy’s law and all that jazz. And I might not like to believe the government would purposely allow us to be thrown to the dogs, but I have the feeling it’s happened before. I’m thinking it’s a good, safe thing that the Republicans in my state are a bunch of cynics.

As for the governor’s plan, I don’t see how slashing welfare (thus increasing the number starving) or taking away equipment money for the cops (thus increasing the number killed in gunfights) or even taking away scholarships offered by universities (thus increasing the number of poor kids who can go to college), is really going to solve anything in the long run. Perhaps if we were preparing for armageddon, it wouldn’t matter if Johnny-so-and-so had a degree in architecture, or that Lizzy and her daughter live on a can of beans a day…but we’re not that deep in it yet. And truthfully, if that day does come, I want my police to have enough ammo and tear gas to keep rioters from destroying the city. But that’s just me.

I don’t see why people can’t work together. No. That’s wrong. “People” implies reasoning ability. And I do see why no one can work together. Sheer, unmitigated, unnecessary stubbornness. Traditions of being uber-conservative or uber-liberal, traditions that say, “no, they’re wrong” no matter if they other party’s ideas have merit or not. Ridiculous. I think that’s what I hate the most about democracy, is the fact that it gives certain people enough power to become arrogant enough to believe they have all the answers to all our problems. And those with that power hold onto it by their fingernails even as we’re sliding deeper and deeper into the quicksand. We scream for them to throw us a rope but they don’t want to let go with even one hand to save us.

Ridiculous.

Not Out Loud

You know what the worst thing about your friend trying to commit suicide is? It’s not the knowledge that you could’ve stopped it. I thought so, for a while, because I knew and I said nothing–why? Stupidity. Human stupidity being the only infinite, ensured thing in the Universe, according to Albert Einstein. But that wasn’t the worst part.

Neither was the fact that afterwards, when her parents read through all her texts and the letters I’d given her calling them out for their mistreatment, they hated me. It’s a hard thing, knowing the parents of your best friend hate your guts. Even worse, knowing they’d never believe you when you say, “I was only trying to help.”

Everyone knows where good intentions end up.

No, that wasn’t the worst part of it. Neither was the fingernail-chewing, constant worry that kept me up at night. Neither was it all the things we’d planned on doing together, that we couldn’t even dream of until she turns eighteen. No. Those were just the little grains of salt in a wound struggling to heal.

The worst part is when I go to say something and I can’t allow the words to pass my lips. We joke all the time, about how someone needs to make the Bio teacher sick so we’d have a sub the rest of the school year. We joke about how, when there’s a huge project due that we haven’t started, we might as well kill ourselves and get it over with.

But you don’t say stuff like that to someone who’s tried.

It’s sort of funny, in the way ironic things aren’t funny at all. All those years we joked about it, and I assumed it was just joking, but what if she’d actually considered some of it? It digs at me. Like little needles in my side whenever we’re hanging out and she’s laughing and having a good time and I’m stuck choosing my words with care and wondering, what happens next?

That’s the worst part of it. That and the fact that she doesn’t have a clue. She doesn’t know I censor myself in ways I’ve never had to before and it makes me want back away and maybe be with someone who hasn’t tried to “check out early.” Because even though I know she’s the same person, she isn’t the same person to me.

Sometimes I wonder if, when I have kids, this’ll all be a story I tell them. Like your parents who always had an experience from when they were growing up about wearing helmets and seat belts. I wonder if one day when my kid’s old enough to try drugs and get depressed I’ll be saying, “When I was in high school my best friend tried to kill herself.” And even though it wasn’t because of me, even though no one except her parents blame me, I’ll still blame myself.

It’s made me decide that the Hell we create for ourselves is worse than anything anyone else can dream up.

Well, now that that’s out. I’ve been holding it for a while. Letting it simmer? Something like that. It’s not the best of subjects, I know, but who the hell needs therapists when you’ve got the Internet?

I’m sick today. I’ve got a fever like no other and I can’t help but press my forehead against cold things and then feel how hot they get. I’m like a walking furnace. Oh yeah, did I mention it’s that same best friend who got me sick? I knew I should’ve ordered separate smoothies. I’m not as fast a learner as I thought.

P.S. I really, really don’t blame her. Not out loud.

Compassion vs. Security (or is it?)

I’ve never considered myself a strict Republican or Democrat. I’m a little more D. on the social issues and a little more R. on everything else. But then I turned on the news and the first thing that popped into my mind, hearing about Guantanamo, was, “what the hell?”

It’s an accurate question. In an issue where liberalism love of life has won out over conservative love of security, I have to say I’m leaning more on the conservative side of the fence on this one.

This is my P.O.V. on it: So, Obama decides that it’d be a nice gesture to reward his followers’ faithfulness with the release of sum-hundred proven terrorists and all-around scum. So Guantanamo prison is closed, all those terrorists are freed on the world–freed! you’d think they could at least just stick them in a nicer prison with visiting hours to appease all the die-hard pro-humanity pro-insecurity fans–and how many weeks later? a fat chunk of them are back in business, minus the threat of American torturers and imprisonment because in this country, we don’t stand for hurting people. I mean, just because a guy is planning on dosing New York City with a couple thousand pounds of Anthrax, bombing major airlines, assassinating government officials, and who-the-hell-knows-what else, they’re still people! And if someone’s a person, of course every side in this war’s going to treat them like it.

Because of course the terrorists share the same opinion. America is just catching up by getting rid of torture. We all want to play fair, right?

Yeesh. If that isn’t the biggest pile of BS I’ve ever stepped in, I’d throw myself off the Empire State Building and save the terrorists the trouble!

I don’t understand where some of this nonsense comes from. I’m usually open-minded about controversial issues because I realize my POV isn’t the only way of looking at an issue. I realize all this typing might just be for nothing because I’m completely wrong about this entire subject…but we do, because we believe, and truthfully, I don’t think I’m so far off the mark.

I understand people who want to save lives. I mean, we wouldn’t deny any US prisoner their rights, would we? That prisoner, felon or no, is a person, a daughter or son or husband or wife, who has a place in the world that even the most critical of right wing-activists are forced to admit a shared humanity. But when it’s a choice between the feelings of one or even a dozen proven, dedicated, secretive terrorists, and a hundred thousand lives in the US and in the Middle East, there’s really no choice at all. I’d trade one for the other in a heartbeat, and it’s not the civilian housewife or war-stricken Israeli I’m trading in.

I’ve always had a skewed view of most concepts. Like with abortion, I can’t say I’m pro-life or pro-choice because I believe in both and neither at the same time. I admit a certain respect for all humanity, because of the potential each life represents. Even one extinguished life is a grave loss because that’s one less life to see and feel and think and maybe, possibly, love. I think any being that is capable of love should be allowed the chance to live long enough to know it.

At the same time, I’d slide splinters under nails and half-drown and suffocate and cut the throats of a hundred terrorists to save the life of a single child, who has not lived long enough to join their ranks or choose a different life. The way I see it, those who live only to inflict terror and death on others are not human. From “humans,” I take the word “people,” and from “people,” I infer that to be human is to sympathize with some aspect of the civilized world and the other people within it. To be a part of the world, not a part of a belief, living only to kill and feeding on fear and surviving on hate. It may be a rationalization, an excuse for torture that perverts the very intention America was founded on, but so be it.

“All that is necessary for the triumph of evil is for good men to do nothing.” -Edmund Burke.

At the very, very least, why release these criminals? What were they thinking, that the terrorists, upon release, would suddenly feel an undeniable urge to live like saints for the rest of their lives? That, if given a choice, they would not return in a year or two years with a thousand pounds of explosives and blow the hell out of some downtown metropolis? Have we forgotten 9/11 so easily?

It’s sort of sad, to be honest. I don’t know if I want to be one of those people who future generations look back on and say, “They let it happen.” And it’ll be true, because I’ve done nothing; less than nothing. I don’t want my best friend or daughter or lover or grandmother to die the next time around, but I’m just waiting and waiting for the next wave to come, and history to, inexorably, fatally, repeat itself.

Waiting

So there’s this kid, and she goes to school every day because that’s what she does. It’s the same thing every week, wake up, get dressed, brush teeth. Grab a health bar on the way out. Every day, the same routine–why? Because it’s what she does.

Goes to school, spends 7 hours watching the clock and doodling on the edges of her notebook, waiting and waiting until the final bell rings, so she can escape the misery of being forced to learn, having lessons shoved down her throat, to go home into another sort of misery.

It’s a physical anomaly, a completely impossible thing, to have a normal family. A family that comes home, the parents from work and the kids from school, Johnny from day care or wherever, and have a meal at the table and play a game, watch TV, talk to each other. When’s the last time any kid really talked to their parents? When’s the last time anyone really talked to someone else, not because they were forced to but because they wanted to?

People are miserable. It’s like they go to work or school or wherever and waste time waiting until they can go home and be miserable there. It’s a constant drip, a runny faucet, goes drip drip drip through the night and sometimes you can’t hear it, if you press your head into the pillow, but it’s always there when you surface. You take a shower and for a while, the falling water drowns it out, but it’s still there.

Always, always, just waiting and waiting and waiting like death is an excuse to waste life, like social classes and wealth really mean anything because what’s the point if you can’t afford a new Playstation or brand-spanking-new cars every week like Paris-freaking-Hilton?

It’s like people don’t expect to be miserable just because they have what they need. You hear the ads all the time about the poor starving children in Africa and you feel guilty because you aren’t poor enough and you aren’t starving enough when really, maybe those starving kids are a hundred times happier destitute then you’ll ever be surrounded by turkey and corn on Thanksgiving and presents on Christmas. It’s like having what you need makes you worse of a person because other people don’t have what you’ve always had. But really, that’s just luck and effort and what’s materialism got to do with happiness anyway? I thought success was measured in dollars when I was a kid because that’s all that mattered. Success can’t be measured in dollars because you can’t buy happiness in a box at the local Walgreen’s just yet. I think it still takes a perscription.

So the people who are supposed to be happy pretend they’re happy because there are people who shouldn’t be happy who are, because they’re not supposed to be anything but poor and starving and pathetic. It’s like, take away all the pressure and there’s instant happiness, except it isn’t instant because it still takes a double cheeseburger to ward off the hunger and a collection from Goodwill to ward off the chill, but in the end they’re more successful buying a cheeseburger with money they collected from begging, then any rich prep girl who inherited numbers in the six digits from her doting parents. She’s got money and suddenly everyone expects her to be happy. Unfortunately, that doesn’t happen until Mommy and Daddy take her to the counselor who scribbles something on a white pad, tears it off, hands it over, and wham! Instant happiness. But it doesn’t come cheap, so none of the middle-class babies get that particular crutch.

I would complain about how fake everything is but I think most people already know that. There are a few who escape the drag, like a current pulling you in, but most people work jobs they hate to go home to families they resent and watch television they despise to dream about the life they’ll always regret never living. They’ll smile when the photographer says smile and laugh when their buddy makes a joke, maybe down a beer because it makes a loud enough buzz in their head to drown out that irritating drip drip drip of their life ticking away, down the drain, into the sewer, gone. Fake? Who knows? Maybe people are just happier being miserable, strange as it sounds. It’s like depression gives them an excuse for watching movies and eating ice cream out of the carton, and complaining that they always make dinner and when will it be anyone else’s turn?

Then there are the happy people who know where they’re going, or if they don’t know, they’re just going, they don’t care. Not everyone’s gotta know. They can eat a tub of double chocolate mint and never regret the pudge it adds on because what does it matter if Prada thinks they’re too fat to be a model? It’s not like all the skinny pretty people become models anyway. And what’s it matter if they get a pimple on their chin? It’ll go away in a while, they know it will, and who cares if their “friends” crinkle their noses and giggle? Real friends buy each other acne cream.

That’s all. Just a little rant, a question maybe, about why people stay miserable to avoid facing their misery, because heavens forbid they should ever show a less-than-perfect face to the people who’ve already seen every flaw and bulge and heard the snorts of laughter and seen the drool when they sleep. It’s like the new Senses Fail album says, life is not a waiting room. Waiting for the day to end, the clock to hurry up, when time always goes the same pace no matter how hard you stare at it. Waiting for your husband to cheat so you can file for divorce without your prissy acquaintances snickering and pointing their over-lotioned fingers, because you just gave them an excuse to show off their latest diamond that doesn’t really make them any happier either. Waiting for school to end, the bell to ring, the faucet to stop dripping, the rain to come, the snow to melt, the boy you secretly love to break up with his girlfriend before she gets pregnant and drops out, waiting for life to get better, your family to get nicer, your fiance to be sensitive, your wife to get creative, your dog to stop puking up breakfast. Waiting to drop twenty pounds and waiting for your eyes to get blue when they’ve never been anything but ugly murky crappy brown. Waiting and waiting until you’re on your deathbed and then what? Waiting to get to heaven? Waiting for angels to carry you away? Well let me just say, they’re probably waiting just like you are, to stop being slaves and become real, to be able to feel, to have the choice to be miserable, because having the choice doesn’t make it a given. Misery only exists because there’s an opposite, and there are people willing to wait their entire life for a chance, a hope, for someone to do it first so they don’t look dumb doing it too, waiting for people to return and people to leave, jobs to get better, the cancer to disappear, feet to get smaller, and spontaneously become the man or woman you dream about every night as you drift to sleep, high off weed or drunk or exhausted.

Seems like waiting is all people ever do, praying and hoping. Letting other people do all the work. When’s it get better? Stop waiting.

People Are…

Dark or light, stretched thin or neat, full of heaviness and sparks or vacant and pure.

People are a lot like clouds.