Stray thought
When I was volunteering as a telephone counselor last year, I thought it would make me, y'know, more in touch with the Plight of Humanity and the Human Condition and help me be more sympathetic to my fellow man/woman/child.
Surprisingly, it had a rather different effect. The experience did make me much more sympathetic to those who can't choose their own misery - schizophrenics (why was she born with brain chemicals different to mine? just because evolution likes minor differences?) or the sick or the poor, but most people, I found, find their own perfect level of unhappiness and stay there. They seek it out.
And then they complain about it, when they've gone to all this effort to manufacture a little private hell. It's like saying, look, here, look at this beautiful field of unhappiness. Face it, we have to be unhappy. It's what makes us happy. It used to shit me to tears when I offered a carefully worded possibility for change only to have it dismissed in two words - I did this up to ten times in a single session. Then I realised that a lot of people don't want to change their unhappiness. They just want to tell people about it. So change is not what they want, they want sympathy. But sympathy is a commodity in short supply.
It's similar to the way that everyone rises to their perfect level of incompetence at work. If you haven't got problems, you've got a problem, after all.
---
The pictures below are of my very first shopping excursion. Finally, and at last, I was paid. It has been a joyful, joyful time. The day before Row and I got paid, we nearly didn't have enough money to get home - down to our last 10 yen for the train ticket - and that was after frantically retrieving my bond money from Melbourne.
So! We went shopping and it was a thing of joy. The shop was edgy (they had a token swastika badge for sale) and 70's Japanese punk blared from the speakers and the assistant had blazing red hair and if it had been at home, he would have given me a dose of attitude but this is Japan, people are enthusiastic, and he was so delighted that we were there that he gave us a discount and took a picture of us with our purchases for the website. Row and I decided we had to try and be over-the-top too and so I wrapped my new belt round my neck and Row dragged on it which made for a gruesome, brotherly sado-masochistic photo. The belt I bought is a rather colourful carved leather belt which makes me look like the Sundance Kid. Over-the-top cowboy chic is so, so in right now. The hottest boys wear up to ten huge, studded leather pouches hanging off their belts, with ridiculously large cowboy boots, and they wear this stuff without flinching. I also bought a blue tshirt which says (beneath a picture of clasped hands and a cross) that "Our God is an Awesome God". I love it.
I also found an astonishing t-shirt - see the picture below. I don't know what to make of it. Are they apologizing for the dawn raid, or the film?
---
When I was volunteering as a telephone counselor last year, I thought it would make me, y'know, more in touch with the Plight of Humanity and the Human Condition and help me be more sympathetic to my fellow man/woman/child.
Surprisingly, it had a rather different effect. The experience did make me much more sympathetic to those who can't choose their own misery - schizophrenics (why was she born with brain chemicals different to mine? just because evolution likes minor differences?) or the sick or the poor, but most people, I found, find their own perfect level of unhappiness and stay there. They seek it out.
And then they complain about it, when they've gone to all this effort to manufacture a little private hell. It's like saying, look, here, look at this beautiful field of unhappiness. Face it, we have to be unhappy. It's what makes us happy. It used to shit me to tears when I offered a carefully worded possibility for change only to have it dismissed in two words - I did this up to ten times in a single session. Then I realised that a lot of people don't want to change their unhappiness. They just want to tell people about it. So change is not what they want, they want sympathy. But sympathy is a commodity in short supply.
It's similar to the way that everyone rises to their perfect level of incompetence at work. If you haven't got problems, you've got a problem, after all.
---
The pictures below are of my very first shopping excursion. Finally, and at last, I was paid. It has been a joyful, joyful time. The day before Row and I got paid, we nearly didn't have enough money to get home - down to our last 10 yen for the train ticket - and that was after frantically retrieving my bond money from Melbourne.
So! We went shopping and it was a thing of joy. The shop was edgy (they had a token swastika badge for sale) and 70's Japanese punk blared from the speakers and the assistant had blazing red hair and if it had been at home, he would have given me a dose of attitude but this is Japan, people are enthusiastic, and he was so delighted that we were there that he gave us a discount and took a picture of us with our purchases for the website. Row and I decided we had to try and be over-the-top too and so I wrapped my new belt round my neck and Row dragged on it which made for a gruesome, brotherly sado-masochistic photo. The belt I bought is a rather colourful carved leather belt which makes me look like the Sundance Kid. Over-the-top cowboy chic is so, so in right now. The hottest boys wear up to ten huge, studded leather pouches hanging off their belts, with ridiculously large cowboy boots, and they wear this stuff without flinching. I also bought a blue tshirt which says (beneath a picture of clasped hands and a cross) that "Our God is an Awesome God". I love it.
I also found an astonishing t-shirt - see the picture below. I don't know what to make of it. Are they apologizing for the dawn raid, or the film?
---
posted by Doug @ 5/23/2005 09:48:00 am
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