Happy Day
Danlowlite and
Zot-fot-piq!
(and all others relevant - I can't find the Everything Birthday Metanode right now)
I got /msg'd by a user who found my original guilt-depression wu too harsh. So I removed the words "stupid", "cynical", and "self-absorbed", replacing them with less pejorative and more thought-out ideas. It is not my intention to insult anyone needlessly. However, when I posted the rewrite I noticed the original had been C!'d. Now I feel bad; perhaps my incisive phrasing was what earned the C!, and the C!'er now feels bad having appeared to C! a mealy-mouthed waffle.
I'm being a bit harsh; it's not mealy-mouthed, just a bit more politic, which is always good. And hopefully more useful.
I *am* concerned, though, about what prompted the complaint in the first place, which is my instinct to be dismissive of people's mental tribulations. This is because from teenage through twenties I was a too-clever, rebellious loner with all sorts of issues about self-worth, discipline, authority, obligations to society or lack thereof etc etc. In other words, I was pretty fscked up myself: failure, more failure, depression yada yada. And I turned out OK. Despite NOT being rich or even financially secure, having zero job security, living in a country this schizoid, going through an election this depressing, not even turning the TV ON for over a year because it's all crap, getting only 42k out of my modem 'cos we chose to live where the air is cleaner and land is cheaper, owning a six-year-old car and a thirteen-year-old car... I am happy. Most of *what matters* is actually OK. I have a wife I couldn't have dreamed up and a baby that's an angel. I have a job; I haven't killed myself or anybody else (that I know of; a couple of those rockets DID go out of sight, heh).
The fact that you have air to breathe is reason enough to be grateful the rest of the day, so I get annoyed when people whinge about stuff that isn't of mortal peril. Whoever said "the more you complain the longer God lets you live" is a person I'd like to choke the living shit out of for being an unimaginative ungrateful blinkered Philistine clod.