A few weeks ago, I discussed a "Goth Kid" quote from the cartoon series South Park. The Goth Kids embrace that alternative culture complete with black clothes and idiosyncratically gloomy music while smoking, drinking coffee and talking about bad everything is. Well, I had to check myself to see how Goth I was...at least from the South Park writers' perspective: "yes" on black clothes, gloomy music and coffee, "no" on smoking and "sometimes" on running down what's going on around me and in the world. I think a lot of so-called "self-help" gurus out there, religious preachy-types and unapologetic extroverts tend to confuse being down on people and society with being down on life. But you can be highly critical and even cynical about people and society while at the same time thoroughly enjoying life: those Goth Kids seem to dig their own scene! I am tired of those who think I'm unwillingly in some kind of shell that they need to crack in order to expose me to the company of all the annoying, problematic people that they feel will bring me real happiness. But truth be told, I'm already pretty happy, thank you, and for the most part hanging around a lot of folks tends to drain me mentally and emotionally while elevating my anxiety. On the other hand, I've always enjoyed good one-on-one conversations, so go figure. People and happiness, for me, are neither synonyms nor antonyms...they're completely different concepts and if the former piss me off from time to time I'm gonna call it like it is, whether I'm "Goth" or not...
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There was a time in my life when people felt the need to tell me that I only thought I was happy. That statement really confused me at the time, but now it just amuses me that people felt the important thing was that they thought I was happy, not whether I thought so myself. It's a funny old world we live in.
ReplyDeleteI remember one time about 20 years ago in the PO when a coworker, angry and red-faced, complained to me that I was unhappy!
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