Wednesday, May 30, 2001
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Wednesday, May 30, 2001 |
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Cheer up By BILLY MURPHY A few years back when the book "Prozac Nation" came out, I became a missionary of sorts trying to get as many people to read it as possible. The subtitle of the book was "Young and Depressed in America," and it explored the absurdity of the widespread unhappiness among our culture; the richest, and most well-to-do in the history of the world. Of course, no one I knew would hang up their cell phone or stop waxing their SUV long enough to listen to me. And after further years of trying to start a revolution of fun and jocularity, I still feel hopelessly unsuccessful. It seems everyone is too serious to see the humor in anything. The less and less we have to be depressed about, the more and more depressed everyone has become. The more you run over a dead cat, the flatter it gets. How have we reached such a state of perpetual dissatisfaction? Our food's late, our food's cold. They forgot to add the ketchup. Not a "Friends" rerun again! Eighty dollars and the doctor didn't even look at my tonsils. The price of gas. The price of cigarettes. The price of a good 30-year-old bottle of merlot. Please rewind. Please refrain from smoking, running, pushing, shoving and talking about your grandchildren. You are the weakest link, g'dbye. Robert Downey Jr. is surely the emperor of this Magic Kingdom of ours. He sits on his stinted throne of wealth, power and success and wears a dual crown of self-love and self-loathing. We bow down and worship at the altar a little too much, ourselves. Obviously Darryl Strawberry is the court jester and the TV yang to Downey's ying is Ally McBeal, perfect and gifted, all the while killing herself physically and emotionally. To paraphrase Anne Tyler from the first line of her new book, "Once upon a time everyone has discovered they turned into the wrong person." Maybe it's because we don't make things with our hands anymore and we have no physical measure of what our worth is. Maybe it is because our society has become so "equal" that there are no winners or losers anymore. We all are on a field, playing a game where we can't swing the bat someone might get hurt. We can't steal a base that word offends some. The pitcher can't pitch he might discriminate and give certain people an unfair advantage. The umpire can't call balls and strikes just who made him god?! This is why our society is so bent on so many "protective" issues. We are born to compete, to struggle, to fight, yet so few things are acceptable anymore, the only thing society allows is some faux-noble cause such as animal rights, or air pollution. In Texas the Air Force is facing lawsuits over complaints that overflights spook the cattle. In California 40 percent of Coronado Naval Base has been declared off-limits during the nesting season of two protected shorebirds. Maneuvers for the marines over a 170-mile trek in the Southwest have been slowed down to ensure the protection of desert tortoises along the course. We are insane. I am all for protecting the environment, but at what cost? Do you think we could have taken the beaches of Normandy if our WWII soldiers had to watch their step for sand crabs? "Please don't grenade me, sir, until I put this clam back in the ocean." The next generation has just graduated into "our" world. What do we tell them? I would say, stop partying and start having fun. Stop pleasing yourself and enjoy yourself. Stop concentrating on "you," but just be you. Forget about tomorrow but make something today. We have it so much easier than generations before us, so just cheer up. And, yes, tomorrow can get worse. But today's tomorrow's worse is still a whole heck of a lot better than yesterday's tomorrow's worse. [Visit Billy Murphy on the Internet at www.ebilly.net.]
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