GTFO N00B

he goes "are thinking people destined to be discontent?" or something like that.

and already i knew some things about him, or at least had myself fooled into thinking that i did. this kid with the glasses that looked kinda like the tall dude from madtv and acted like one of his characters. If you know how I feel about madtv you already know how i feel about this guy. Well, he said this.

What else is there to know about him? Well he was there with a girl he wouldn't stop touching. Hand on the leg, holding hands, standing behind her and holding her hair, etc. The sort of behavior that smacks of desperation and\or juvenile separation anxiety.

About thirty of us are sitting in three arcs of lawn furniture watching a guy with a guitar in a backyard in Bohemia; a quaint little hamlet on the South Shore that looks like the kind of place where you don't lock your doors but everyone does. Guy with a guitar asks "does anyone have any questions at this point in the show?" and it gets a small laugh from some people, myself included, but he was serious and people asked questions. It was actually very nice. This kid goes on some tangent about struggles he has or has not shared with the man in the guitar that may or may not have inspired some of his most favorite songs, and the question he asks goes something like "are thinking people destined to be discontent?" and i put my finger in my mouth and vomited on everything that was happening.

just kidding.

but i thought about what he said. I thought about the agony of awareness and the discomfort in being conscious and that line in that beatles song "living is easy with your eyes closed" and that line in seven where morgan freeman goes "it's easier to beat a kid than to raise him" and I agreed that there is a discomfort involved in engaging the more pressing issues. There is. You are right Mr. Madtv.

But I want you to think about this discomfort. Is this discomfort because you are thinking about things or is this discomfort because you do not know how to think about things without sharpening them into little daggers and stabbing yourself in the heart with them? Maybe the last emotion you have left in your dried up affection starved heart is outrage and you're scrambling around like a junky begging for his next fix. Am I projecting? Always.

Thinking people are destined for discomfort as long as they have not granted themselves the serenity to accept what they cannot change, the courage to change what things they can, and the wisdom to know the difference.

And this is something you grant yourself, and you do it, and unfortunately you have to shut the door on outrage. Maybe not completely, but for the most part. Because outrage is a juvenile emotion. Outrage only exists in a world where there is justice and injustice and I do not believe in the concept of natural justice. You learn how to aikido things and redirect their negativity into positivity. You learn that maybe you can't do anything about starving children in the sudan or the violence in the middle east but maybe you can just not be a sonofabitch and give hope and inspiration to someone who actually can do something about starving children in the sudan or the violence in the middle east.

what do i find comfort in? i find comfort in the idea that violence will always exist and there is nothing to explain this violence besides the chaos that is the natural world. maybe that sounds counter-intuitive because if the earth was only a little bit further away from the sun it couldn't support human life and if our mitochondria and hearts and livers and white blood cells didn't do what they do humans wouldn't survive. with that in mind the world seems anything but chaos. or maybe it makes nothing but sense when you think of humanity and civilization as the flower growing in the crack of the cosmic sidewalk. and one day our sun will burn out or we'll get smacked upside the planet with an asteroid the size of texas or maybe somewhere there's a physical force moving at an untrackable rate that is going to smash our solar system into little tiny bits and pieces before we can turn our heads to look at the sky. and that is scary to some people. that's why we make disaster movies, because people want to see the future before it happens so they can be prepared for it when it gets here.

i find comfort in chaos. maybe i can be the little flower growing in the sidewalk of civilization (which is a flower growing in the sidewalk of the universe) and maybe it makes me sad to see other flowers growing blocks away and i know we will never meet, but at least I know I am not alone. at least i can maybe be something someone will find beautiful and we can make some small corner of the universe slightly less unbearable for you you glasses wearing girl doting skinny piece of garbage. find something better than your existential nausea to bond over with indie rock icons. lets talk about anything. the weather. sports. your favorite madtv sketch. because for a minute i thought you were trying to flaunt your misery in some effete way to woo your dark haired girlfriend who loves you the way she loved the baby bird that landed in her driveway she almost hit with her bike at age twelve. Am i speculating? Always.

Figure it out kid.