On this particular night, I was scrolling and came across this gem:
When you first look at it, especially when you scroll by it really fast, it just looks like the usual trite shit that you see people share from time to time, usually those relatives or friends that you don't really speak with, but their on your friends list because it's the polite thing to do. They have the plain, generic text set on some sort of soothing, bright but not jarring background, and the quote is either by a very, very famous person, and everyone knows it, or it's by "Unknown," which most likely means someone created the thing, and realized that it would sound more deep and important if they just put "Unknown" underneath, rather than Jane or John Smith.
This one caught my eye because it was actually someone I knew very well that was tagged in it. I read it, scratched my head, and then had to read it again because, after looking at the comment on the original post, I thought I may be going insane.
Now call me crazy, but I'm fairly certain this is one of the stupider things I've seen in a solid two or three weeks. Which is a fairly good record, on a side-note, especially for someone as connected to the internet as me.
Now see, the reason this and a lot of these other, "I'm so important and introspective, look at me," pictures bother me is also one of the same reasons some religious people bother me. And as a preface, I don't have a lot against religion at it's core. I get that people like to believe that there's something out there that has a plan for them, and that it's scary to believe it's just us in a large, empty space with no one else to play with. But my problem with some religious people, and a lot of these quotes, to connect it back to my thesis as my English teachers have taught me, is that they have this, "Just hope and pray and believe and always play nice with others, and your life will one day be good," sort of vibe coming off them, and that rubs me the wrong way.
One night last year, I went to see a play that I was invited to by one of my friends. He knew someone in the cast, and wanted to go, but he had two tickets. It was at a Catholic school, so not surprisingly, they were putting on a production of Godspell, made a little bit less harsh for the kids. It was modernized, the main characters being street kids, and one of the parables in the middle of the show had the children asking Jesus where they were going to get food and water when they had nothing, being street kids and all. Jesus' response boiled down to, "Don't worry about what will come tomorrow, just trust in God and he will provide for you." That one line is what bothers me about all these quotes, the one mentioned above in particular.
Believing in something is fine. if you need a higher power to get you through the day, it's most likely better than alcohol. But when that belief goes so far as to have you think that if you just hope and believe, than you won't have to do anything to further your life, because you will be provided for, you're in for a rude awakening.
Because it's nice and dandy that you want to hope, but when you expect the universe to turn around and give you something better than you have just because you've had a good attitude, that's just idiotic. That's not what a fully-matured adult does, that's what a grade school kid does when the teacher promises the class a gold star next to their name on the class chart if they behave well.
And to address the picture mentioned above specifically, what really got my goat with it was the part about growing into a better person. Now I may be way off base, and I could just not be getting something about this picture that's obvious to everyone else, but what this picture boils down to, in my eyes, is that it's no one else's fault but your own if you don't achieve your goal. It doesn't matter what other circumstances that are going on in your life, whether that be a terrible home life, or a dead-end job that you seem to be stuck in, you didn't succeed because you weren't a good enough person. Because even if you've been through things that no one else should have, you haven't grown enough to be deserving of your goals.
And I just don't think that's how life works. And I'm not trying to make excuses to cry and whine and point fingers at everyone but me when I don't succeed. I'm behind owning up to your failures and pushing beyond your limits despite what you've been told by others and yourself, but this picture doesn't give me that message.
It just looks like someone threw some nice words together and slapped it on an aesthetically-pleasing background. Like, it sounds nice and fucking flowery when you have some calming sky-blue colours backing it and you slap the, "unknown author" tag on the bottom to make it look deep, but I can't just say, "I'm going to move to LA and become a famous movie star," and then a year later when I'm still sitting in my bachelor apartment that I share with two other dudes after waiting tables for eight hours, I realize that my dream didn't come true, not because life can be a bitch sometimes, but because I'm just not the best person I can be yet.
That got a bit ramble-y towards the end, and I'm writing this after midnight so it could be making very little sense, but this bothers me because these sorts of thought-processes are things that, when shared, lots of people look at and fervently believe in. That can be damaging, because it can leave people thinking, "Maybe I'm just not a good enough person yet. Maybe that's why God hasn't answered my prayers."
But like I said, maybe I'm just insane. Maybe I'm the only one in the world who doesn't get it, and the joke's on me. I'm like that kid in your grade five class that ruins jokes because he needs them explained to him for five minutes before he gets it. And then everyone just laughs at him because he looks like a massive tool. So, maybe I just don't get it. Or maybe I'm just a cynical asshole. Well no, I'm definitely a cynical asshole. That could be my problem right there.
No comments:
Post a Comment