slapped silly

They say:

Everything happens for a reason.

Or

The universe is designed with your happiness in mind.

Or (even better)

The whole world is conspiring to shower you with blessings.

(And I don't mean this guy when I say "They."

Idiot.

Him. Not you.)

The Zens say the same thing a little differently. It doesn't sound so nice the way they say it:

Desire causes suffering. If you can accept what is, you stop desire and so you stop suffering.

These are all fancy ways of saying:

Tough nuts, dudes. You're stuck. Make the best of it.

Most of those don't sound like "tough nuts, dude" do they? They make it sound like the world is one big flower bed and everybody's getting jabbed at by fairies with Sparklers: "Ta da! All your dreams will come true."

As we all know, however, all your dreams don't come true. Shitty stuff happens all the time. And yet these fools persist in saying things like "The universe is designed with your happiness in mind."

You could try slapping them silly but they'd just grin and think about how that's part of the universe's design for their happiness. You can't win with these people. Amazingly, the large majority of them are adults who have already been slapped silly by Life long before you got a hold of them.

So what to do with 'em?

If you can't beat 'em, join 'em?

Maybe ...

We can all spend an awful lot of time getting angry about something that's gone wrong - kicking and punching things (and people), thrashing in bed or at a bar - but no matter how many toes or knuckles we break, no matter how knotted our bedsheets become, no matter how many bouncers we spit on, we're never gonna make a dent in that thing we're angry about.

(Unless we're angry about how well-formed our appendages are. Or how dry Moose's shirt is.)

But if you can just say, "Shit." or "Shit shit shit. Fuck. FUCK. Fuck fuck fuck fuck FUCK." and then get on with your life and make the best of it, your toes and knuckles remain intact, you don't have to pay any oversized man's dry cleaning bill, and you can actually sleep in your bed at night.