If you’re one of my Facebook friends, you may have seen the Salon column I linked to titled “I trusted my gut and got screwed” by Cary Tennis. If you’re not one of my Facebook friends, you can clicky the linky. And you should send me a friend request, because I rock and would make an awesome addition to your stable of “friends.”
In short, the column is about being honest with ourselves about what we really want in order to avoid making gut decisions that make us want to disembowel ourselves so our guts can never ruin our lives again with their dirty, sweaty lies.
Red Flashlight pointed out that the column was good for not saying crap like, “If you just change your attitude, everything will be moonbeams and kittens, and moonbeams shining out of the asses of kittens, and kittens shining out of the asses of moonbeams.” I paraphrased her there.
I got to thinking about how much that advice to look on the bright side pisses me off. It generally means, “If you just delude yourself into being happy, you will be.” Of course you will be. But you’ll also be deluding yourself. There’s a word for people who do that shit, and it’s “Scientologist.”
I’m not always successful at the brutal self-honesty thing. There’s no evidence that Mom can hear me when I talk to her from the toilet or that asstastic people will meet with bad karma, except in the sense that they generally attract each other in a vortex of suck. But if I’m unhappy, there’s probably a good reason, so I’d rather be genuinely bitter and pissed off when the occasion calls for it than floating on a cloud of false optimism.
Sometimes, you gotta tell a kitten to piss off and take her moonbeam with her.
