about ** anything **. You’re driving me crazy. Yes, YOU. And YOU. And you over there in the corner, don’ pretend you don’t hear me, sit up straight and listen to me. I’m only gonna say this once.
Listen, life is beautiful. It is excellent and good. It is precious and joyful and every day that you rise and see the sun should be a day that you have a big fat fuckin’ smile on your face for the sheer beauty of it, you got that?
If you are reading this, the chances are excellent that all of the following are true, to one degree or another:
You have a roof over your head, the wind and the rain and the snow are * outside * and you are * inside * where it’s warm and cozy. Yeah, it costs you money. Shut the fuck up, I said!
You will have a warm, comfy, cozy place to sleep tonight. Probably with squishy pillows, a delightfully comfortable mattress, and warm, soft covers to bundle up in.
You won’t be going to bed hungry, unless you do so by choice. You have at your disposal an enormous variety of foodstuffs, many of them prepared for you, not by you, which will provide every calorie, every vitamin, every nutrient your body could ever need. On top of which, they are almost all very pleasing to the palate.
You are educated! You can read, write, type, use a computer. You therefore have access to more knowledge in a week than most people on earth today, much less throughout history, will or could acquire in a lifetime.
You have access to pain-killing drugs. 'nuff said.
You have access, * even without insurance* to better medical care around the corner at a local clinic than the King could have received in 1750, and almost certainly better than most people around the world can receive even today. Shit, you have access to better medical care at your local * pharmacy *. And if you DO have medical insurance, you have access to medical care that borders on the miraculous.
You have nonstop entertainment in your home, 24 hours per day if you want it. TV, Radio, Music, your computer and your reading matter. You could keep yourself entertained for the rest of your life without ever leaving your house.
You can speak freely about your government without fear of torture or mysterious disappearance or imprisonment.
As for what is probably true of most of you:
You ain’t actively dying. You are relatively healthy. Chances are also good that most of the people you love are not actively dying and are relatively healthy.
Nobody’s beatin’ the shit out of you day after day. You don’t face a day full of being raped and having it called “prostitution”.
Your relatives aren’t going to mangle your genitals to make you an acceptable marriage partner.
You aren’t going to have to go to war.
The poorest among you is richer, healthier, and has more peace, comfort and pleasures in this life than most human now living or who have ever lived could even dream of. Even among kings and queens.
And here’s the rest, before you start whining again: even if you DO have significant challenges in your life, chances are good that your whole existance is not a miserable hellhole. You have options, you have tools. Life is NOT an endless, bleak reality that you have no hope of escaping, not at all.
You are almost certainly living in one of the advanced and free countries on earth, most of you in the US. You are the most privileged, healthy and well-cared for group of humans to ever live, with more fun, more opportunity, more comfort, more education, more free time and more of everything except filth, disease, ignorance and deadly poverty.
So all that bitching and whining and griping you’ve been doing? Can it. All that feeling sorry for yourself? Spare me. All that anger and frustration at the long lines, the bad traffic, the stupid salesgirl, the irritating in-laws, your fucked up boss…chew it up and swallow it. All that torment you are experiencing because you can’t be a full time artist, you can’t lose that 50 pounds, you were born with a giant nose, you have acne, knock knees, you drive a crappy car, you take the bus, you hate your work, nobody loves you, you aren’t rich, you you you you you YOU need to learn to APPRECIATE LIFE.
Cuz you know what? It rocks. Even the shitty parts rock. Throughout most of human history, right up to and including today, the average human being’s life is nasty, brutish and short, and yours isn’t. It’s goddamned amazing and wonderful and remarkable and fabulous and a thousand blessings laid upon thy back and there simply isn’t * time * for you to be a whiny shmuck who thinks he/she is going to live forever and can afford to WASTE it being a brat. .
SO SHUT UP already, and start spreading a little joy in the world, instead of sucking it out by being a crabby, impatient, shallow, self-absorbed little shit that doesn’t get it.
stoid
sick o’ yas
[sub]PS: None of this is intended to lead anyone to believe that I think we should all just accept the world as it is, without striving for greater improvement in all things, most particularly ourselves. Only that our overriding attitude should be one of gratitude, as we go about the business of upgrading our wonderful world to something even better.[/sub]
