"Eat yourself some motherfucking candy." (3/3)

With all that said regarding actual freedom, I need to take a different side. (I am, of course, a straight white male.)

Here in the United States, our society is sexist, racist, homo- and trans-phobic. It is overwhelmingly speciesist and an "Eternal Treblinka" for other animals.

But

We don't have to let the world's misery make us miserable. We don't have to look for the wrongs in everything. 

We not only deserve to be happy, but we can help others more if we're not spending all our time drowning in the world's cruelty.

Below is what I consider to be one of the essential chapters in Losing My Religions. 

Very Little Really Matters

When shit brings you down, just say “fuck it”

and eat yourself some motherfucking candy.

–David Sedaris, Me Talk Pretty One Day

As humans, we are wired for action. This leads us to have a reaction to many things we see and hear. Responding to nearly everything made sense when we were living in a small band and anything we could see or hear directly impacted us. But now, with the 24/7 availability of news, we see and hear much more than people did 25 years ago, let alone 100,000 years ago.

In the end, however, very little of this news actually impacts us as individuals. (And vice versa.) Thus a negative reaction to bad news serves no purpose. (However, feel free to have all the positive reactions you want! Those flowers really are beautiful! These curried chickpeas really are delicious! I really am lucky to have met my partner! I’m super fortunate to live in a time of clean water, indoor plumbing, modern sewage systems, and HVAC systems! This book really is amazing: funny, touching, compelling, and helpful! It also has perfect use of the serial comma!)

Mindfulness and meditation can help. Although difficult, we can use the insights of others to train ourselves to not react to events that aren’t relevant to us and/or that we don’t have any power over. For example, things will be grating (a loud car revving past) annoying (how expensive food is in an airport) frustrating (my computer froze and needed to be restarted) or just silly (“Secret Location” and “Let It All Evolve” didn’t make Tears for Fears new album. Boo! Luckily, you can find them on YouTube. Yay! Be sure to use AdBlock).

But we don’t have to hold on to our reactions. We can just release those annoyances with a few deep breaths and memories of pleasant things.

I’m not saying ignorance is bliss. I am sure you know plenty of bad things that motivate you to want to make the world a better place. But you don’t have to watch every video of animal cruelty forwarded to you. You don’t have to read every report about climate change. You don’t have to watch every “issue” movie.

If you take on every bit of information available to us today, it is hard, if not impossible, to live a happy life. It is even harder to help make things better, as there is always another report to read, documentary to watch, podcast to stream.

One of the very few times I’ve ever been in a bar, I was sitting next to Tom, who I had met at Students for Animal Rights. (He is in the Ingrid Newkirk pyramid.) Phil and I were hypothesizing that maybe depressed people are more likely to be animal advocates. Tom growled, “We’re depressed because we know what is done to animals.”

Today, it is easy to know what is done to many and various individuals. We are bombarded with reports of poverty, war, mass shootings, abuse of animals, attacks on LGBTQ people, subjugation of women. It is difficult to avoid cruelty. And then, social media is the perfectly-optimized tool to program us with anxiety and depression.

But taking in horror after horror doesn’t make you a good person. Making a difference makes you a good person.

Choose where you can make a difference. You don’t need to know everything. You don’t need to read or watch everything. As Nobel Laureate (and one of Anne’s colleagues at Carnegie Mellon) Herb Simon said: “[A] wealth of information creates a poverty of attention.” (Quoted in our fellow Illini Nick Offerman’s Gumption.)

Relatedly, as Matthew Yglesias said, “One shouldn't be complacent about the problems in the world, but one should avoid frustration about them.” (Offered even though you should never trust anyone named Matt.)

You don’t need to be depressed. You don’t deserve to be depressed. You can be happy and still make a difference. Indeed, I would contend that being happy makes it easier to make a difference over the long haul – both in your ability to work constructively and in the example you set for others.