Philosophy 101

There's a whole generation walking among us who take everything too seriously...no, not too seriously, too personally.

There's a difference. The pain, suffering, injustice and corruption that happen on a daily basis deserves to be taken seriously. It affects all of us in one way or another and we ignore it at our peril.

But those who take it personally take it too far. They get so wrapped up in the pain and gloom that they can't function. They get so outraged that they can't think straight. They get so focused that they can't talk about anything else. Quite frankly, they wind up annoying their friends who secretly wish they'd lighten the frak up.

If you're one of these people (and let's be honest...we all are at one time or another), allow me to share two pieces of wisdom that have helped me in times of great stress.

*STUFF HAPPENS and
*JUST BECAUSE

That's it...the beginning and end of the whole "Why is the world/economy/political system screwed up like a soup sandwich" conundrum. Stuff happens all the time...good stuff, bad stuff, funny stuff, sad stuff...any time you have stuff, stuff's gonna happen. And it's gonna happen just because...because it can, because it will, because it's Monday, because we want it to, because we don't want it to...just because. Like the swallos returning to Capistrano, Stuff will happen just because and unless you've been appointed Supreme Being, we can't change that.

So...take the important stuff seriously, but not so personally you become a shrill, shrieking bore. Give yourself an afternoon off from saving the world once in awhile & watch the Three Stooges or Foghorn Leghorn cartoons, rent some Mel Brooks movies or take a nap. Stuff's gonna happen...you might as well have a few laughs while it does. Why? Just because.

Shift To The Left, Shift To The Right

One of the things I love about social networking sites like Facebook is the ability to reconnect with people I knew when I was growing up. It's very cool to find out someone you hung out with in high school still remembers you and wants to know what you've been up to.

I've noticed an interesting trend, though, while finding my old friends. A lot of them have become a lot more conservative socially and politically over the years. This, in and of itself, isn't necessarily a surprise considering where I grew up and the crowd I used to run with. We were all pretty much good kids...didn't party, didn't do drugs and were pretty insulated from the evils of society by our parents and Sunday School teachers.

Of course, things change when you get out into the real world. You learn that everyone wasn't raised in the suburbs with a white picket fence and a loving Mom & Dad. You learn that not everyone was at church every time the doors opened. You learn that not all good people are good all the time, just like not all bad people are bad all the time. You learn about life.

Somewhere between graduating high school and turning 30, you become the person you're going to be. After that, your opinions and perception of the world are shaped by your circumstances. How you see things depends a lot on if you're married, if you have kids, if you have a job that pays the bills or if you're barely making it. People who once railed against the system and corporate America decide that eating and sleeping indoors is a pretty good thing and kids who saw the world strictly in black and white discover sometimes there are shades of gray.

I thought about all of this as I read over the profiles of my old friends. Then I realized that I was making radical assumptions about people I really care about based on a bunch of 1s and 0s on the Interwebs. People are complicated, messy and inconsistent...exactly like life. The anonymity of the web robs us of real, human interaction and personal contact.

Just because someone wants to elect John McCain or Barack Obama doesn't define them as a person...it's merely a small part of who they are. To badly paraphrase Walt Whitman "We are large...we contain multitudes."