I Could Be Wrong, But...
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Grudge Holding Letter Bombing Shit Listers
©2009 David Boyne
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As I write this essay, in mid-April 2009, the United States Census Bureau PopClock is ticking off the number of humans on the planet at roughly 6.8 billion.
Indeed, the planet is crowded. With humans, at least, if not with lions, and tigers, and bears, oh my. Those life forms, and many others, are on the fast-track to giving up the ghost. But that’s their problem. We the People have problems of our own. With more and more separate but equal citizens hitchhiking a ride on planet Earth to take a spin through time-space, the problems we are creating are larger, deeper, and complexer than any we’ve created before. This is called progress. It is also called global economic collapse, global warming, global terrorism, global threat of pandemic, and global threat of thermonuclear war.
Most of us are so busy creating problems we don’t know the time of day. While others are standing on the metaphorical soapbox on the proverbial street corner and insisting it is five minutes to midnight! Then there are the folks who assert there are no problems we cannot crush, provided our military-industrial-government is at least twenty times larger, deeper, and complexer than all the other military-industrial-governments combined. (These particular invasive species have recently been uprooted from Washington, DC, and replanted in Texas and Wyoming, their native habitats.)
And then there are other folks who insist there is nothing wrong with humanity that cannot be fixed, no problem that cannot be solved, no divide that cannot be crossed, if we would all simply join hands in a globe-encircling circle, and sing, “I’d like to buy the world a Coke!” (A note to those under the age of 40: Don’t get excited. This make-believe experiment in global singing lessons has been tried. And, while the Coca-Cola Corporation enjoyed an engorged spike in sales, the rest of us just got schtumfphed. Humanity’s thirst for ‘the old ultra-violence,’ and polluting, and killing, continued, unslaked.)
I could be wrong, but after a half-century of wandering this wind-tossed world of forms, I believe I have identified the root problem, the Mother of all Problems, that we metastasizing humans have been generating for generations.
That problem is—drum roll and cymbal splash—anger.
You remember those roughly 6.8 billion people the PopClock is ticking off? I would unscientifically but anecdotally estimate that 6.23 billion of them are—right now at this once-in-eternity moment—angry. I would also submit that 9944/100% of what these people are pissed off about isn’t something happening now, but something that happened in the past, and more often than not, something that happened a loooooonnnnnnnnnnnggggggggg time ago in the past. (Note: Being angry over past events is called holding a grudge, a phenomenon I explored in the slant, Thanks For the Memory.)
My many years of observing people in their natural habitat, begs the question—
Why are so many people so angry about so many things so much of their time?
To tell you the truth, I don’t know why.
And to tell you more truth, frankly, I don’t give a damn.
We are all of us animated stardust. And we live out our once-in-eternity lives on a lush green and blue planet that provides abundant foodstuffs; water that is safe to drink, so long as it comes in a bottle; and a climate that had, before we meddled with it, perfect pitch. Everything we need, we have. Because we just happen to be spinning through the cold black Universe just close enough to, and just far enough from, a single stable star.
We live in Paradise. And we are angry. Go figure.
Personally, I’m happy to live, and let live. Even when one of those 6.23 billion ticked-off people tries to kill my happy buzz. (One popular technique angry people use to kill someone else’s happy buzz is The Letter Bomb. For an exploration of that phenomenon, you may, if I live long enough to write it, read my slant, You’ve Got Mail!)
As a man who, by nature and by nurture, is deeply indolent, I am amazed by the awful amount of energy it takes to be and to stay angry. Observing angry people as they yell, insult, beat up, shoot automatic weaponry, throw hand-grenades into hotels, and detonate explosive vests on crowded buses, I have often wondered, “How do they do it? How do they stay that angry for that long?”
Verily, I am the product of a shoddy public education, and so the things I am ignorant of, including high school mathematics, could, and in fact do, fill libraries. Yet, even by my rough and rudimentary calculations, if the amount of energy people put into being and staying angry were being put into playing with children, cracking dumb jokes at board meetings, and helping old folks cross busy streets, the crime rate would be zero, the environment would be clean, and murder would only happen in cheap novels and movies.
One way that angry people stay angry is by keeping what they proudly call, “My Shit List.”
What is this thing called, Love? Whoa, wrong essay. What is this thing called, My Shit List? And why do all these angry people never go to sleep, or get up in the morning, or leave home, without it?
Easy question. My Shit List is nothing more than a mental or written list of people an angry person is angry at. Lest these angry people become distracted by all the many splendored forms of happiness available on this planet, and forget why they are angry, and at whom they are angry, they carry and continually review, My Shit List.
People who carry around My Shit List feel they are in charge of their Life. They are confidently “taking names and kicking asses,” keeping a sharp eye out for opportunities to punish each person on My Shit List. (Punish them? For what? For having caused the Shit Lister to feel angry, of course.) Methinks a Shit Lister's sense of power and purpose is a delusion. Anyone who contstructs and carries My Shit List has in fact ceded control of their Life to the people on My Shit List. For those people are free and living their once-in-eternity Life any way they please. And the Shit Lister is confined to living one way: angry.
Whew. Exhausting. Let me catch a breath while posing a distracting question. Why is it socially unacceptable to hug or kiss or say, “I love you!” to people we don’t know, or don’t know well?
Same question, inside out: Why is it not only socially acceptable, but respected and admired, to insult, deride, and otherwise assassinate the character of, people we don’t know, or don’t know well?
Angry people go on the attack and claim to be “telling it like it is,” “just being honest, ” and “healthfully venting.” Television political ranters, as well as people at New York, New York cocktail parties, and folks at Manhattan, Kansas PTA meetings, are admired for attacking people they don’t know or don’t know well. But, were I to walk into a room filled with people I did not know, and start kissing them and hugging them and telling them, “I love you!”—Every cell phone in the room except one would be used to call 911. The one exception being a call placed to the National Enquirer.
Our society respects anger, and suspects affection.
I could be wrong, but I think that all anger is rooted in the same soil: Pain. But pain is not a choice. We feel it, or we don’t. Anger, on the other hand, is a choice. And these days, it is a very popular choice. So many people all over this world are feeling pain and choosing to be angry about it.
Grudge holders, letter bombers, and shit listers, to a man, woman, and child, are in pain. And I think they all make, at least in the beginning, the same mistake. They think, “Hey. I’m in pain! But I’m betting if I can put a world of hurt on someone else, I’ll transfer my pain to them, and I’ll feel good again!”
Well, fine. Be that way. But everyone over the age of eleven knows, from experience, that holding a grudge, sending a letter bomb, or starting a shit list, only temporarily gets rid of one’s pain. Yes, we can and often do cause pain for others. But we are not freed from our pain. In fact, spreading pain outside of ourselves intensifies and deepens the pain inside of ourselves.
The only way to not feel pain, is to not feel pain. Think about it. Or don’t. There’s always something numbing on television.
Now.
In the movie that is my once-in-eternity Life, I am the blockbuster mega star. Yet, I fully understand and happily accept that in most other people’s movies, I am but a teensy-weensy bit player, only rarely getting a speaking part, and mostly appearing as a walk-on or extra. So, recently, when a teensy-weensy bit player in my movie became, and remained, angry with me, I was struck by what a waste of energy this was. For I am certainly as teensy-weensy a bit player in the movie that is her Life, as she is in mine. Still, she felt compelled by her anger to inform me—by emailed letter bomb—that she was holding a grudge—and that nothing I had said or done or written, had removed me from—“My Shit List.”
Reading her letter bomb, I exploded in laughter.
When my laughter had quieted down to a happy buzz, I decided, “I must write about Grudge Holding Letter Bombing Shit Listers!”
And now I have.
Oh. By the way. I love you.
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