I have trouble with all of the inspirational pictures, stories, and sayings floating around these days, especially the ones on social media where all of the aspiring Confucuses seem to be hanging out.
To me, in this day and age, the age of the *like* and the *comment*, it just seems to flow in a watered down effect.
Now don't get me wrong, I understand where it's coming from, and at times I do applaud the purpose, but lately I can't so much as refresh a page without someone through something telling me to get up, to get moving, and to make something of myself.
I also find it funny that these words of wisdom are usually accompanied by a pretty sunset, a tranquil oasis, or a spectacular pair of breasts. What!...a city dwelling, flat chested, heavy chick can't tell me it'll be all right?; a man with one leg, lice, and a muffin top, hopping along the asphalt, doesn't have the right to let me know it's OK to be me? And what of that child with no eyelids; the one wearing the parachute pants who has teeth that could open a can, is he too inarticulate when it comes to bullying?
Embedded in the glamor the message is getting lost. It's all too marketing-like now, too cute. Enough already! Enough with these cookie-cutter cyber bumper-stickers that are engineered for the fad crazed!
Before long they're going to have me feeling as though the only way I'm ever gonna be right with the universe is if I chisel out an 8-pack, spray on a tan, and don a speedo; putting my package out there for all to mock.
Tell me something; is a hundred and twenty eight pound Microsoft executive going to gain anything by reading a passage about the rigors of a long day of work from a mega-dude straddling a hog, with barbed wire around his 24 inch bicep and "bread for destruction" tattooed across his upper back, just because he is gazing off into the clouds?
Waterfalls, sunsets, prairies, wagons, blue skies, puffy clouds, tropical islands, yogurt covered raisins, microwave ovens ..... Am I to understand that when it's raining, and the setting is a parking garage, that there are no words, let alone a chance, for someone in need?
It's all about as relatable as thumbing through Glamor magazine.
I find this to be a huge problem, I do. I think, just like everything else in this country that has fallen under the umbrella of "fad-fix", that once the fad transport has set sail, the people who truly need to book passage, well, they get left behind in the wake.
I guess what I'm really trying to say is that every time I read one of these self-help mantras, I can't help but to think of those less fortunate, those not getting the "message".
Whenever I read something like, "The difficult road leads to choice and chance is the key to the blah blah blah", once the boobs wear off, I tend to think of those who have probably never had, or will never have, a chance or a choice, let alone the Internet connection guaranteeing them access to this latest cyber fortune that is notably worthy, at the very least, of a bland cookie shell and some lottery numbers.
In fact, I'm going to now go on record as saying this, "Here's to all of the folks who DO work extremely hard, who DO dream enormously big, and who ARE exponentially generous, yet somehow will never get noticed as they waste away under the dimly lit shitty job, terrible wage, scrawny physique, and the spouse who berates, smothers, and uses them".
Know what else? I'm going to recognize a few others. There are a whole lot of people out there who could use real help, and at the extreme very least, my piddly little recognition... but they're out there and so I'm going to mention them:
The family of four who will be sleeping on the street tonight, the ones who probably won't get that regular status update telling them to get off of their asses and to take charge.
The twelve year old in the hospital, the one with stage four cancer. She is waiting for a mother who is never late; a mother whose image is now going to be forever linked to a dirty, rain soaked, teddy bear that lay on the side of the road, a few feet away from the drunk driver in hand cuffs.
The twenty six year old autistic gentlemen who can't stand the physical pain of the embrace he so desperately craves. And what of his parents, the loving couple whose desire to embrace that man ignites whenever he's finished playing on the piano a symphony he's only just heard for the very first time.
The teenage boy, the one who is asked to translate the meaning of the love each and every time he diverts the attention of his enraged drunken father away from his mother.
Every eight year old with burn marks.
Fallen soldiers.... and their families.
The wife, the woman who lived and breathed fifty storybook years of marriage, the one who now cares 24/7 for a husband who doesn't remember her.
The child who was repeatedly beaten unconscious and the man now sleeping under the snowflakes bearing the weight of those memories.
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