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Negativity

As usual, I was talking to Sarah the other night, pissing and moaning about how awful my life is. She said to me, “I just don’t get why your life is so bad. You always complain about it, but I don’t see why.” That made me stop in my tracks, because I had absolutely nothing good to say in response. All I kept thinking was, “Holy shit, she’s actually right. I bitch about everything, but nothing’s really wrong.” I told her I bitch because I like it, despite the fact that (usually) nothing is wrong.

She didn’t get it. If nothing’s wrong, why do I bitch? I tried to explain, realizing already that I sounded like a big dumbass, that I make things wrong, in my head, so I’ll be able to complain about them. I have no legitimate problems, certainly none worth complaining about.

I’m not starving. I’m not even struggling to make ends meet. I live in a good neighborhood in a (generally) decent town where everybody’s totally insane but few people commit any memorable crimes. I’ve had my share of laughable romantic liasons, some of which actually lasted for more than a week. I am able to get a college education. I have parents who don’t openly dislike me, and usually pretend to support me even though I’m usually being an idiot.

In other words, things are okay. I read somewhere that people who hate life and the world, in a cruel and ironic trick of nature, usually live longer than people who are happy and pleasant all the time. I don’t know about that. It feels good to stop hating everything all the time.

I doubt it’ll last, though. I’m not really wired for positive thinking, no matter how good I may have it. In fact, I’m the kind of guy who, when told his life isn’t so bad and so he should quit bitching, would actually do something to make his life bad enough that it is worth complaining about.

Then again, I’m the kind of guy who stopped eating meat for six months — not because of some kind of animal-cruelty protestation or because a doctor told me I wasn’t allowed to, but because of a secret fear that the government was selling us meat made from humans. And the worst of it is that I wasn’t so worried about eating human meat — my problem was the fact that the price was so high.

“There’s a word for people who think everyone’s out to get them.”
“That’s right — perceptive.”
— Woody Allen

Tags: insight, meat, perspective, rotten life, Soylent Green, Woody Allen

Posted by Stan on March 6, 2003 8:01 PM  | Permalink | Stories of Pain and Humiliation | Digg It