"To truly laugh, you must be able to take your pain, and play with it!"
-Charlie Chaplin
I've spent years now trying to wrap my head around how people can be so miserable. I didn't understand the complaints, the anger, the stress and the hopelessness that seemed to be everywhere. But then I lived as you and it's starting to make sense now.
I don't share it, yet I think I see how you've been infected. Prosperity kills happiness.
I was born into poverty. Real poverty. The kind where my mom taught me to steal from kid's lunches at school to bring it home. The kind where you turn on the oven with the door open in the winter to sleep in the kitchen. The kind where you learned to shoplift instead of how to ride a bike as a kid.
However, I'm not angry about any of that. I had to be told it was a bad thing. It never occurred to me that it was anything other than the way life was. You don't lament what you don't have when you don't even know it exists. Everyone lived like that, what's the big deal?
That's the trade secret about the bottom that people aren't willing to talk about. No one has more fun than those with nothing to lose and who believe they have no chance to gain. It was true in the PJ's just like it was true in prison. We didn't just smile when something made us happy. We yelled about it, others joined in, we ran in circles like mad men.
You chuckle when you find something funny, we'd tackle each other and scream about it to strangers. You haven't lived until you've been in a group where one guy gets a dig on someone and the rest of us are literally jumping, yelling in unison, and picking each other off the ground because we're laughing so hard it demands a dramatic physical response.
So why can't everyone have that? Why could we laugh and crack jokes to a man's face when he got shot yet people are enraged when the price of gas goes up? Why could we laugh off the horrors that happened directly to us while the average person can't emotionally handle something they saw on the news? We're the ones who are supposed to be broken and traumatized. Yet you're the ones who get divorced over money problems. Something's wrong.
I think it's because the middle is poisonous. That's where most people live, middle-class America, right? It's where I am now. My house still feels like a castle to me. Why do I have two living rooms? My kids all had their own bedrooms, spoiled little goblins. I have an actual pantry that's stocked in a way that you'd think me a doomsday prepper.
But really, who cares? All of this stuff, these things, are for my family because I convinced myself that I'm supposed to provide them with ease and comfort. I love each of them dearly yet I now know none of them will ever feel the degrees of joy I've known in my life. They're all very happy and comfortable, but in that unfortunate lukewarm way everyone out here seems to experience happiness.
The middle is a taste of all the things the world has to offer. It's the carrot. The middle spend half their life trying to get all of the things they want so they can spend the remainder of their life trying not to lose it. There's no end. And that's just the money part of it. Bills, debt, insurance, rent. Replacing furniture and appliances that once got passed to the next generation that is now cheaply made yet somehow more expensive at the same time.
Then there's the emotional and mental stagnation of the middle. Because you know what comfort is, maintaining and expanding it became an obsession. We had no air conditioning or cable TV so we poured into the streets and spent our time together. People in the middle spend their time inside in isolated parts of their houses alone. Thank god for "comforts".
What's worse, because they haven't lived a gutter-rats life, they lack the contrast necessary to recognize what actual suffering feels like. So, based on the middle ground scale they have available, mundane problems feel catastrophic. If you've never had a broken bone, a bruise is a big deal.
Here's where people start fighting me because their troubles are the real McCoy. "No, mine is different, here's why". You'll argue in favor of your woes, seeking to convince me it deserves sorrow. Why not make fun of it? Middle people broadcast problems for the world to see, wanting sympathy. It's because they live where people pat them on the back for their cookie-cutter problems rather than at the bottom where they slap you for complaining.
I'm not saying your troubles don't hurt or that they're insignificant. I'm not downplaying what you've been through. That's the thing about feelings, they're subjective to your personal experiences. It's likely I suffered less trauma from hiding in public libraries until after closing so I can sleep there when I was homeless than you do from a utility bill shut-off notice you received in the mail. It's because, in the middle, that notice is a big deal.
Middle class isn't just a socioeconomic status, it's your state of being as well. Your emotional range is 5-10 whereas the bottom feels things 0-20. We may have a few degrees of sadness you don't but the trade-off is we have a lot of degrees of happiness that aren't on your scale.
That's why we're so loud, why we're always in each other's business, why the next man's problems are our problems too. Share that burden brother because we're in this trench together. You think misery loves company because sad people want to see everyone else sad too. You're wrong. Real misery loves company because that shared pain makes the pain impotent.
Quit taking the things that hurt you so seriously. Even a brush with death is hilarious if you tell the story right. It's all subjective. It's all in your head. You can argue with me but even if you're right, your prize is being miserable. Congratulations. Quit letting past-tense horrors, current stresses, and potential future worries weigh you down. You're literally living like Scrooge if those Christmas ghosts were every day of his life.
Take it from someone whose life once sucked according to you, it's only bad if you decide it's bad. Learn to suffer correctly and laugh at it. Pain is inescapable so you might as well learn to play with it. Currently, your understanding of happiness is getting in the way of you being happy. It's okay, you're allowed to choose it.
Wrong Speak is a free-expression platform that allows varying viewpoints. All views expressed in this article are the author's own.
Thought-provoking. Fascinating. True. Kudos!
"Comfort is the worst kind of slavery because you're always afraid that something or someone will take it away."
~ Lucius Annaeus Seneca
Perfect article for Thanksgiving. Love your writing. Thanks for sharing your gift and perspective with us!