Life in Reverse

There are too many canned phrases being thrown around out there, and I hate almost all of them. Among some classics of our day are; Really??, Cool story bro, Awkwaaaard and That's why we can't have nice things. These are generally used in a piss-poor attempt at humor by those who have difficulty formulating legitimate jokes in a given situation, and are generally harmless. Given their harmlessness and the good intentions of the people who use them regularly, these phrases probably shouldn't piss me off the way they do, but facts are facts and I'm not one to lie to myself. In another category of canned phrases are the ones we use in situations in which you want to say some helpful words to someone who is dealing with a troublesome situation. These are things like; Well, what are you gonna do?, It is what it is, What doesn't kill you makes you stronger, and my all time fucking favorite, Everything happens for a reason. There are few phrases uttered in the English language that go up my ass further than, "everything happens for a reason."

The short and simple reason that I hate that particular saying is that it's a complete cop-out and almost everyone uses it. Usually, it's used as a last resort when a situation sucks to the point of no reconciliation and the best thing to do is to look it in the face and say, "well this sucks, but I didn't die, so I guess I have to get over it eventually." I'm not saying that grieving is not necessary in some cases because it most definitely is. What I am saying is that whatever happened sure as fuck didn't happen as a means to an end. When a kid dies in a car accident because of a drunk driver or a couple is killed when their bucket falls off the Ferris wheel, what divine reason can you offer to those who have lost them?

Here's a stupid example, but even something as simple as locking your keys in your car can be twisted and manipulated to the point where you could say that there was a reason for it; maybe because the AAA guy that shows up happens to be your high school crush and you finally get to tell him. Or maybe the only person you can get a hold of is your ex and she drives straight down to the parking lot (the one where your stupid ass locked itself outside) and tells you that she cries every night knowing that she can never have you back. I don't know. I can guarantee you though; you probably just had a lapse in brilliance and shut the car door before taking the keys out. Anything that happens after that is because you locked the keys in the car; you didn't lock them in there so that the chain of events that follows could take place.

Other than the fact that "everything happens for a reason" implies that life occurs in reverse, it also implies that we are FAR more important than we really are. Human beings and our super-sized egos need a reason or an explanation for everything. Also, each person on earth is the main character in his or her own story, so it can be damaging to realize that most of the events in your life are unrelated and inconsequential to the happenings outside of your home or office. The fact is that the world generally turns as if you as an individual are not even on it.

We each live in a microcosm in which everything is of the utmost importance. People who have trouble coping with the things inside these microcosms turn to coping mechanisms such as therapy, drugs, alcohol and in extreme cases suicide or violence. When these things occur, any person's little world can be rocked; but when you pan out enough so that you can see the big world, you can see that nothing has really changed. To think that things happen to you in order to forward the world's big plan for you borders on arrogance.

I might have gone off on a bit of a tangent there. Anyway, cut the shit with the canned phrases and say something new. Say something that you are actually thinking. The human population is starting to resemble an assembly line of pull-string dolls that are released from the factory with predetermined phrase-banks. We are fed rapid-fire bullshit almost every second of the day. The least we can do is to stop bullshitting each other, but that's some perfect-world talk right there.