Why is everyone so angry?

[mrnoodle]

That's another thing that I question, though. Are our hardships really as hard as we think they are, or do we simply not have anything REALLY bad to compare them with? By the way, I also know people who have a really hard time coping with illness or bad times -- I wasn't saying all sick people are serene. I was saying that the most serene person you know is one who has successfully dealt with hardship, not one who has never endured it. Sloppy writing.

but marichiko, in disagreeing with me, you emphasize (kind of) my point. What happened to whatever Polynesian tribe in 17XX, and how it proves that white people suck is an abstraction. The fact that you (and I) are thinking in those kind of terms is evidence that our brains don't have nearly enough to do insofar as our personal survival and well-being is concerned.

I can point to my own family over the last year/s to illustrate. My family is close, as many are. Things that happen to another member hit close to home, and the effects are keenly felt by all.

My baby nephew is going in for surgery Sept. 1 to correct something with his skull. It fused too soon, and has to be broken/cut apart again to allow for growth. That sucks.

My grandmother died because the staff at her nursing home failed to give her heart medicine for 15 days. We had struggled for years to take care of her at home, and only when the situation became unmanageable did we reluctantly allow her to be admitted to that place. That seems unfair.

I just got arrested for DUI at a checkpoint, and will lose my license for a year (it's 15 miles to work) and possibly get a month in jail. My fault, but had some lousy luck involved too (.087 BAC, resulting from 3 1/2 beers and no supper). This is going to put a financial strain not only on me, but on my parents, who are fast losing precious retirement years bailing out their dumbass kid. They deserve better -- particularly since neither of them have ever so much as even touched the stuff. They don't even fudge on their taxes. My dad said, when I told him about the arrest, "Why get a lawyer? You did it, didn't you? Just go take what the judge gives you." They deserve kids who are as straight as they are, but we 3 have broken their hearts countless times over the years with drugs, premarital sex, booze, and money trouble. The other two are married with kids, and living like their parents raised em too. I've still got one or two hanger-on demons, but things generally are looking up.

Dad got prostate cancer, the aftereffects of which are both highly personal and emotionally devastating.

One cousin I grew up with was killed in a car accident in TX. He had been drinking. He was in the process of divorcing his wife, who, upon learning of his death, went to his parents' ranch, entered the son's house and removed all the saddles and buckles he had won in rodeos since childhood. So she could sell them. For drugs. The sheriff was called, but could only stand there because they were still legally married and the stuff was more hers than his parents'. Even though she had only known him for 3 years. She drove off with 25 years' worth of their son's history, flipping them the bird over her shoulder.

The next year, that same guy's grandfather (same ranch), whose health had collapsed after the grandson's death, fell while closing a gate and broke his hip. He was found 4 hours later and taken to the hospital. They needed to perform surgery to fix the hip, but he developed an infection and lost his leg. The infection was not completely removed, however, and soon after, he lost the other leg. Got sick after a stroke, nursing home for a couple years, and he died. A month later, his despondent wife (who lived in the same nursing home) followed suit. The father, who lost his parents and son in the same year, has a look in his eyes that can only be described as worn out.

Another cousin went in for his 2nd kidney transplant two days ago. the first one was rejected 10 years ago, and he's been on dialysis ever since. He's not even 30 yet.

But I ate 3 meals yesterday, slept in my own bed in an air-conditioned house. I came to work this morning, and because I have relative freedom to do whatever I want as long as the articles are in on time, I spent an hour at the Cellar. Tonight we're having a band practice. I made my car payment on time this month, and found the $700 to finish paying off my lawyer (whose brother committed suicide over the weekend -- no shit).

Life could be so much worse. Yet, the sight of someone applying makeup while driving makes me homicidal, even though it makes absolutely no difference to my ETA at work.

I lost my point a long time ago, but it was therapeutic to write about all that shit for some reason.