“You are making me sad.”
My daughter says this sometimes. She’s 6. When she says it she’s trying to convey that my discipline or whatever caused her “sadness” is somehow my fault and is an offense to her little-girl perfection. It’s cute and disturbing all at once. She’ll get over it. I’m going to love it out of her.
I wish I could do the same for the rest of you. You are all making me very sad. You and your eternal state of being offended.
I have good news for you, though.
It turns out that you aren’t offended after all.
I know you thought you were offended by that thing that one person said. You read it online and it got you all fliffered. I haven’t seen you that torqued since that lady grabbed your wallet and put it in the blender at that organic, non-gmo, essential oils patio bar in that hip new part of town you wouldn’t dare walk even during the day this time last year. You remember, don’t you? The one with the therapeutic lightbulbs in the restrooms.
So back to that one thing that one person said. You responded with a clever reply and you checked it every 7 minutes to see how many likes it trapped. You were totally fliffered. To the point of being pluffered. It was nuts. No, it wasn’t nuts. There were NO NUTS. (Not even pine nuts, which aren’t actually nuts, there a seed!) Those are dangerous. It was crazy. Wait, no, it wasn’t crazy. That term is insensitive to actual crazy, er insane, people.
It was a real hoot. (Any pissed off owls out there in Sea Log land? I’m not an owl so it’s pretty ballsy of me to use their lingo. Did I just reference testicles?)
So like I was saying, aren’t you just tickled to discover that you aren’t offended? What a burden to bare no more.
(Do you know that almost all people are naked in the shower? How do you even get through your day with the weight of that knowledge?)
Let me say this so there are no mistakes made:
You (that’s YOU) are not (the opposite of are) offended. Offense is a response to a perceived threat. Something disagrees or even disproves (yes, presenting contradictory evidence is still a thing…) your position and you think it’s a threat to your very existence. You don’t say that. Though, sometimes you do. Mostly I know you feel threatened by the way you respond. You say things and do things that are the equivalent of choking someone until they pass out. It’s absurd and it’s all around us and it’s frightening.
Everyone needs to stop. Right now. Stop. Please. Before I choke on my own sadness for our society. My lungs are on fire.
If you just simply must be offended, be offended by the utter lack or respect we display for people who are different than you are. Now there’s something to get pissed off about. There’s something to post about 45 times a day on social media. There’s something to create ridiculously curated memes about. Get offended by how easily you get offended.
It’s of miraculous proportions.
There is no thing that can be expressed anymore without complete outrage from some one or some association. Some days I want to go live in outer space, far away from your opinions.
I am routinely astonished and hurt by the filth and hate. It is everywhere. It always has been. Why do you need to contribute to it? What do you think you’re doing? There is no value in it. The exception perhaps being to reinforce your own carefully constructed framework of who matters and why, and why you are just lucky enough to be in the special group. This isn’t actually valuable, though.
No. It isn’t. I don’t care how many times you say it is and flap your pearlies about opinions and free speech and barf.
There are no special groups. There are no special people. Not by comparison that is. People are value neutral. If you take one, you take us all.
And the looks. Stop it with the looks. Like you’ve never done something boneheaded behind the wheel. Thank you soooooo much for glaring at me. I’ll make sure to never do that again. By the way, I was backing up to get away from the two cars that were in a screaming match over a parking spot at the mall. (It was a really nice parking spot…)
No, I’m not disenfranchising people who incorporate essential oils or light therapy into their lifestyle. I’ve used both. I’m not sure they do anything. I’ve tried them, though. Even if I thought they were dumber than that mustache on Adolf Hitler’s cowardly upper lip, it wouldn’t matter. My opinion has zero bearing on your life. Unless you give it that power. So stop being enraged by people who don’t see the world the way you do and start directing that at yourself to kick your ass out its stupor. Our world is dying and the best we can come up with is whining like little brats who want to believe that their special snowflake should be inducted into the snowflake hall of heroes.
I want to take all of the snowflakes and put them in the oven. (Except for Olaf. I love a snowman who sacrifices himself for true love. He also likes warm hugs.)
This is the ugliest time I’ve ever seen. Simply horrifying.
Literally punch me in the face.
Right now.
Please. Take all that hate and just wipe the tears of my face with your fury. Beat them out of my heart so the blood can return.
Because that would actually be of consequence. And I might even learn a lesson worth incorporating into my living. At the very least you might exhaust yourself in the process and the rest of the world won’t have to bare the pain you carry in those clenched fists of yours. (I’m sorry you are broken. Would it help at all if I told you I am, too?)
The judgement is impossible. I can’t live up to it. I’ll never clear the distance. Neither will you. So I guess we are all super screwed. Unless we learn to love ourselves instead of secretly hating who we are. Unless we learn to love each other without some reciprocal condition.
Do you remember when you couldn’t understand why people didn’t just get along? You were 8 years old and you just wanted to play. Be that kid again. You can do it. I can do it. We can love each other. We can disagree and we can still LOVE EACH OTHER. You have to choose it though. It won’t choose you. This isn’t gym class. So stop picking teams.
We all have amazing days where we could be fooled into thinking everything is beautiful. And we all have days so flawed that we should question whether there is any good in us at all. Through all of that, you and I are just trying to live. Why is that not okay?
So now we know that you aren’t actually making me sad. I’m making myself sad by giving you power you shouldn’t have. It’s up to me to do something about it. Though it wouldn’t hurt if you would stop being so tragically afflicted.
Thanks for considering all of this.
You can go ahead and blast me now for violating some closely held personal belief. I deserve it. After all, the world as you know it is now in peril, never to be as good and safe as it was when you believed your ideas were precious.
P.S. There isn’t one person that I didn’t write this for. We’re all guilty. We’re all the answer.
