No Complaining

That's actually what this post is all about. I've decided that it isn't very healthy to keep negativity inside and building. As a matter of fact, a ton of stuff worth complaining about has piled up over the course of Lent so far. It's starting to make me physically sick. Here is where I'm going to try to spill it and see if it makes a difference. At least here, no one will be forced to listen to it. Here goes, starting most recent:

- Sometimes I wish that I could just march up to important people in charge, grab them, and just shake the daylights out of them. I really don't think that powerful people always realize what kind of influence they have over the lives of others. What's worse is that they usually utilize their power to obscure what they're doing from other people. How many people my age in America know about the UN Security Council? About how there are five permanent, powerful members who can veto any kind of intervention at the drop of a hat? Or how the last health care bill submitted to Congress by the Democrats was almost 2,000 pages long-- and it didn't even provide a way to reduce any costs? It is totally unfair that our generation has not only been charged with taking care of this obscene mess that the one before us created, but that we have to deal with the fact that we don't know anything about it! Partly because:

- People on the news are paid to obscure what happens in the world. Cline said it best on Wednesday when he said, "Using language is not a neutral act." It makes sense that news stations should be on 24/7, because people will watch this garbage over and over! When there's nothing happening, they pay random "experts" to sit at a table, whether real or virtual, and shout at each other. It's like an ideological coliseum-- and even though we pick our favorite mental gladiators, all we really came to see is blood. Part of that stems from:

- We live so inconsequentially. Our lives have purpose, but absolutely no meaning. We don't take care of ourselves. We say we need more sleep and end up getting even less. We say we really need to exercise, laughingly, as we open a bag of Doritos. Doritos aren't inherently bad, you know. And I'm not nominalizing my culture as "we" so that I'm exempt. I do it, too. The power is in place for us to buy what they make and work our nails off to get it and eat what we "deserve" and never question their necessity. What would heaven even look like for us?

- Would it just be relationships? Or the relationship? Would it be the myth of a soulmate, the one true love we are destined for since before we were born? The perfect match to our terribly flawed, incomplete, undeserving, but still somehow deserving personalities? Please. Your favorite Nicholas Sparks character is just that: a character. He's not going to materialize from the pages of your book and ask you to spend the rest of your life with him because "that's the way it should work." And Jennifer Aniston/Megan Fox/whoever-your-favorite-stunning-actress-is is not going to walk off the screen to you-- nor would you ever have a chance with her if she did. These people don't exist! It's insulting to everyone else that you believe they do exist! Why should I want to be like that? I don't want to be that guy! Guys who want to be those guys and girls who want to be those girls end up making themselves crazy/sick over it, which is really, really unfair. Stop making a list of what you want in a mate. Stop taking cues of what's attractive from the dominant culture. Just trust God and live your life and don't worry about what's next. Loneliness sucks, but a crappy relationship is worse-- trust me. I'm glad I can't complain anymore.

This didn't help me much, but it has shown me that I've changed what I complain about.