Even though I’ve been house bound because of the recent cold and snow for the last few days, I’ve been in a pretty decent mood.  Too bad it seems like no one else I interact with is.  I have been dealing with people in foul and bitter moods in most my personal interactions lately.  I have, for the last several years, made it a point to find out what is going well in the world.  And I try to tell my friends, neighbors, and family what is actually going well.  Of course my words fall on deaf ears most of the time.  I am more often than not greeted with dead silence, as if I didn’t say anything.  I would rather people tell me how much of a liar I am then be ignored or met with indifference.  I swear to God that most people not only find meaning in their misery, they are actually proud of being angry and miserable.  And it is wearing on me.  It is wearing on me so much that I more or less avoid socializing as much as possible anymore.  What is the point of opening up to people if they are just going to try to drag you and everything else down?

I am not anti social, believe it or not.  And it’s especially painful for me when I try to socialize and I hear nothing but doom, gloom, that humanity is getting dumber with each passing day, the “damn kids” are going to be the death of us all, ad nauseam.  I don’t want to hear it anymore.  I really don’t.  Take that gutter tripe to someone else.  I for one know the world isn’t heading to hell in a hand basket, no matter how bad my neighbors and family want it to.  I have this terrible habit of trying to think for myself and do my own research.  I actually challenge what I hear and even believe. Of course this doesn’t make me popular at all.  But if I have to be shallow, stupid, trendy, and doing what everyone else around me is to be popular, then I want nothing to do with popularity.  I don’t even want to socialize with such people.  I’d rather spend my days alone and interacting through digital means than be forced to listen to panicked and uninformed people gripe and moan all the time.  I want to socialize, but when I do I face primarily irritable and rude people.  No thanks, I’ll just keep to myself while you take your petty grievances and proud to be victim mentality to someone else.

I’ve dealt with pessimists and worriers my entire life.  And I used to be one of these pessimists and worriers.  But once I got out on my own and away from most of the people I knew growing up, I found out that things are actually improving all over.  I certainly didn’t know it from the monopoly on outside information my elders had over me as a child.  Once I ventured out on my own into that “cold cruel world” my elders told me was going to kick my butt every day until I died, I found out that most problems are more manageable and solvable than people realize.  They just got to stop griping and moaning long enough to come up with possible solutions and keep acting until one works.  I not only found the world wasn’t the horrible hellish nightmare my elders and teachers told me it was, but some pretty cool stuff and people are out there.  Too bad the negative gets far more attention than the good.  Once I figured out that civilization was not the kill or be killed jungle people told me it was, I became very angry with my teachers, elders, and even my family for having misled and even outright lied to me my entire youth.

And now I see people my age as parents who gripe about how bad the kids are today when not even twenty years ago, their elders were saying the same tripe about them.  Are people so forgetful and stupid they don’t learn from their past?  I swear for ours being the species that had enough empathy to build the trust in each other to move out of the caves and build a pretty cool civilization that is now on the door step to the stars (we need but open the door and walk in), we certainly despise the less experienced members of our species who are also in their prime physical and breeding years.  Why is that?  Are we fearful of our own mortality that much?  Are we fearful of the fact that someday the world will carry on as if you and I never existed?  Are we fearful of the truth that we are not the center of existence like we too often think we are?  We are dust in the wind, dude to quote Keanu Reeves from Bill and Ted’s Excellent Adventure.

I am told that socializing is good for my mental health problems.  Is it really when most people I meet are in lousy moods with little hope?  I don’t think so.  I am also told to avoid negative and rude people.  I do that, but most people I meet anymore are negative and rude.  I’ll just stay home and not interact in public for now.  Too many people trying to kill my hope and vibe.  I won’t let that happen.  Just because the people I am around are irritable and worried, I won’t be.  I spent most of my youth being worried and angry because of being misinformed by people I had no choice but to trust.  I was sad and often hopeless as a child.  Now that I’m a grown man, I refuse to go through that again.  I don’t care how irritable and pessimist everyone else is around me.  I refuse to partake.  And if that means living the life of a hermit, so be it.