Refreshing… This might be a place in this huge unconcerned cosmos where I may offload the stuttering mangled garbage in my head without being told to shut the fuck up. If so halleluiah!
Ok so I sound like some sad Goth-obsessed, manic-depressive who listens to portishead and occasionally takes a razor to my wrists...(haha yeah...that’s gonna happen...NOT!!) But hey everyone hits a downswing every once in a while...so I’m pissed. Sue me!
Anyway, so I’ve been chewing on this one for a while. I mean, is it just me or are seemingly content, successful, urban individuals getting the blues with almost menstrual precision of late? And for no apparent reason it would seem? I mean look at me. I'm down. I'm out. And I have NO clue why!
I mean, it's not like I’ve lost my livelihood or the love of my life, my best friend, all my money, my favourite pair of furry bunny slippers...right? So all's well, right? WRONG! I mean what is this feeling? This horrible heavy stomach-clenching, gut-wrenching cannot-hold-my-head-up-feeling? Where did it come from? And WHY!!!? By all rights, it shouldn't be there...shouldn't even apply to me. I mean, my life is GOOD, DAMN IT!!! Ok so I’m not bouncing off the walls with glee every second of everyday but hell, I can't complain. And yet I do...
I think I'll blame this ‘Myth of Happiness’ i have in my head. Yes...happiness! Apparently, it’s a must have! And apparently happiness, not unlike homemade detergent and cherry preserve, can be created at will in required quantities and stored in airproof Tupperware for indefinite periods of time (ok the Tupperware bit only works for the soap and cherries). But the point is - you're supposed to make your own happiness, right?
So how? How are you supposed to do this? I mean shouldn’t happiness-making at least come with a manual? I mean what are we supposed to do...look about our world and watch films like Simon Birch, and a few sappy phone company commercials and read books by people like Henry James Waller or Richard Bach (horror of all horrors) and collate the sum of their syrup'n'scotch soaked wisdom to read that the easiest way most of us make ourselves happy is by ‘having’.
Yes, yes I know; that brings us straight to the ridiculously malformed yet unquestionably popular idiotism i.e. ‘money can't buy happiness'. Well, let’s state for the record and for all eternity that over here i.e. in this corner of cyberspace that is dedicated to the voices in my head, we will have no truck with the trite, the trifling, the over-simplistic; the downright stupid.
So in keeping with this policy of responsible extrapolative cogitation, we shall abstain from acknowledging the sheer ‘A is for apple’ naiveté of that statement let alone bother to tackle it.
So, no what I mean by the ‘having’ principle is that we are supposed to have a certain number of non material things that are supposed to then add value to our lives - things like a fulfilling job, love, intellect, intimate friends, great familial relationships, a productive day, impeccable taste and a few other things you can’t really pick up at the checkout counter at the supermarket. Now, say for a fleeting moment you have managed to amass all these things, together; or at least in aesthetically pleasant combinations. Yay, halleluiah, break out the bubbly! You’re happy!
Yeah, but for how long? See, that’s where it all starts to fall apart. You can manage a few moments of sheer gut-bursting joy given the right circumstances, but then you throw the balance somewhere by squabbling with a friend, a lover, a mother; or outgrowing your job, your friend, your lover, your mother or whatever and the happiness starts to leak right out of the bag making an unsightly puddle right at your feet.
Here’s the thing...say you were programmed to accept that things like this are bound to happen and that we must expect to be ‘happy’ 4.36% of the time, ‘content’ 73.65% of the time, ecstatic 0.87% of the time and, plain miserable for the rest of the 21.12%, then we’d have a realistically devised psychometric pie chart and we’d see that things are as they should be and we’d spare ourselves the further agony of soul-wracking self-analysis and just carry on being content.
Unfortunately we’re programmed to constantly and persistently search for this elusive and extremely capricious state of being i.e. happiness. We’re programmed to be relentless and unceasing in our quest for it...never allowing ourselves to settle naturally into the furry-bunny-slipper comfort of a more placid and attainable ‘mere contentedness’. So, not unlike small hormone-induced rodents, trying to navigate a bizarre maze in some mad scientific experiment, we tend to keep butting our furry little heads against the countless imaginary yet not insubstantial walls built with the brick and mortar of our insecurities, our limitations, our fear and guilt and shame and compounded sense of failure.
Result? YOU’RE FUCKIN’ MISERABLE!!! So what is wrong with this picture? Well, we’re all trying too hard aren’t we? And for who? for what? WELL, HELL!! I DON’T KNOW, DO I? I mean if I did, this whole tirade would be a little redundant don’t ya think? Ok so what’s my point? My point, maybe, is we need to relax...and debrief ourselves...and stop watching sappy films and commercials...or at least believing in them...and we need to make up our definitions and our yardsticks for happiness and truth and beauty and the rest of the important stuff by ourselves, as we go along. The way we make our lives up. We need to go back to thinking and feeling for ourselves...cause I for one am sick of having to compare my life to an image on a flickering screen to see if I’m doing it right!
Ok over and out. I’ve run out of steam.
Ok so I sound like some sad Goth-obsessed, manic-depressive who listens to portishead and occasionally takes a razor to my wrists...(haha yeah...that’s gonna happen...NOT!!) But hey everyone hits a downswing every once in a while...so I’m pissed. Sue me!
Anyway, so I’ve been chewing on this one for a while. I mean, is it just me or are seemingly content, successful, urban individuals getting the blues with almost menstrual precision of late? And for no apparent reason it would seem? I mean look at me. I'm down. I'm out. And I have NO clue why!
I mean, it's not like I’ve lost my livelihood or the love of my life, my best friend, all my money, my favourite pair of furry bunny slippers...right? So all's well, right? WRONG! I mean what is this feeling? This horrible heavy stomach-clenching, gut-wrenching cannot-hold-my-head-up-feeling? Where did it come from? And WHY!!!? By all rights, it shouldn't be there...shouldn't even apply to me. I mean, my life is GOOD, DAMN IT!!! Ok so I’m not bouncing off the walls with glee every second of everyday but hell, I can't complain. And yet I do...
I think I'll blame this ‘Myth of Happiness’ i have in my head. Yes...happiness! Apparently, it’s a must have! And apparently happiness, not unlike homemade detergent and cherry preserve, can be created at will in required quantities and stored in airproof Tupperware for indefinite periods of time (ok the Tupperware bit only works for the soap and cherries). But the point is - you're supposed to make your own happiness, right?
So how? How are you supposed to do this? I mean shouldn’t happiness-making at least come with a manual? I mean what are we supposed to do...look about our world and watch films like Simon Birch, and a few sappy phone company commercials and read books by people like Henry James Waller or Richard Bach (horror of all horrors) and collate the sum of their syrup'n'scotch soaked wisdom to read that the easiest way most of us make ourselves happy is by ‘having’.
Yes, yes I know; that brings us straight to the ridiculously malformed yet unquestionably popular idiotism i.e. ‘money can't buy happiness'. Well, let’s state for the record and for all eternity that over here i.e. in this corner of cyberspace that is dedicated to the voices in my head, we will have no truck with the trite, the trifling, the over-simplistic; the downright stupid.
So in keeping with this policy of responsible extrapolative cogitation, we shall abstain from acknowledging the sheer ‘A is for apple’ naiveté of that statement let alone bother to tackle it.
So, no what I mean by the ‘having’ principle is that we are supposed to have a certain number of non material things that are supposed to then add value to our lives - things like a fulfilling job, love, intellect, intimate friends, great familial relationships, a productive day, impeccable taste and a few other things you can’t really pick up at the checkout counter at the supermarket. Now, say for a fleeting moment you have managed to amass all these things, together; or at least in aesthetically pleasant combinations. Yay, halleluiah, break out the bubbly! You’re happy!
Yeah, but for how long? See, that’s where it all starts to fall apart. You can manage a few moments of sheer gut-bursting joy given the right circumstances, but then you throw the balance somewhere by squabbling with a friend, a lover, a mother; or outgrowing your job, your friend, your lover, your mother or whatever and the happiness starts to leak right out of the bag making an unsightly puddle right at your feet.
Here’s the thing...say you were programmed to accept that things like this are bound to happen and that we must expect to be ‘happy’ 4.36% of the time, ‘content’ 73.65% of the time, ecstatic 0.87% of the time and, plain miserable for the rest of the 21.12%, then we’d have a realistically devised psychometric pie chart and we’d see that things are as they should be and we’d spare ourselves the further agony of soul-wracking self-analysis and just carry on being content.
Unfortunately we’re programmed to constantly and persistently search for this elusive and extremely capricious state of being i.e. happiness. We’re programmed to be relentless and unceasing in our quest for it...never allowing ourselves to settle naturally into the furry-bunny-slipper comfort of a more placid and attainable ‘mere contentedness’. So, not unlike small hormone-induced rodents, trying to navigate a bizarre maze in some mad scientific experiment, we tend to keep butting our furry little heads against the countless imaginary yet not insubstantial walls built with the brick and mortar of our insecurities, our limitations, our fear and guilt and shame and compounded sense of failure.
Result? YOU’RE FUCKIN’ MISERABLE!!! So what is wrong with this picture? Well, we’re all trying too hard aren’t we? And for who? for what? WELL, HELL!! I DON’T KNOW, DO I? I mean if I did, this whole tirade would be a little redundant don’t ya think? Ok so what’s my point? My point, maybe, is we need to relax...and debrief ourselves...and stop watching sappy films and commercials...or at least believing in them...and we need to make up our definitions and our yardsticks for happiness and truth and beauty and the rest of the important stuff by ourselves, as we go along. The way we make our lives up. We need to go back to thinking and feeling for ourselves...cause I for one am sick of having to compare my life to an image on a flickering screen to see if I’m doing it right!
Ok over and out. I’ve run out of steam.
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