You Have A Moral Obligation To Your Soul To Seek Out
And Find Joy In Good Things.

By Rich Harshaw

“Give it a second; it’s going to space!”

That’s the advice Louis CK gives Conan O’Brien about technology and cell phones in the clip below. The advice stems from the comedian’s observation that we’re developing into a nation of entitled whiners who take literally everything for granted… to the point where any minor hitch in daily routine becomes grounds for angry ranting, incessant complaining, and even full-blown rage.

If your smartphone, for instance, refuses to load your Facebook page in the expected 0.4 seconds, you get impatient and implore it to “COME ON, YOU STUPID PHONE!”

We’ve all been there.

Traffic jams. Slow moving drive-thru lanes. Unfilled water glasses at restaurants. Delayed flights. Weather outages on DirecTV. Discovering broken eggs after you get home. Not enough likes on your Facebook post.

Major injustices. Unacceptable delays. Unforgivable mistreatment.

Watch for yourself, and enjoy. Or read the transcript here.

I agree with Louis CK: everything IS amazing, and nobody’s happy.

Of course, it’s easy to be unhappy. You don’t have to look very far to find plenty of miserable souls who are eagerly recruiting others into their particular flavor of despair, discouragement, and injustice. Maybe showering their bitterness on you is defense mechanism; after all, misery does love company. Just check your social media feed, read the paper, or turn on the evening news and you’ll see the world is indeed going to Hades in a handbasket.

The politicians are bankrupting our country, there is a war on women, terrorists may attack at any moment, fossil fuel reserves are dwindling, children are starving in third world countries, Ebola still may ravage our population, the young generation is disrespectful and lazy, and the Dallas Cowboys will blow it (again) during December.

And oh yea, your latte was lukewarm by the time your coworker got it to you.

Here’s my unsolicited advice: LIGHTEN UP, IGNORE THE NEGATIVE, and LOOK FOR GOOD.

I’m not talking in hyperbole here. I’m serious.

First, make a commitment to lighten up. Right now.

Give the waiter a break. Quit talking about your friends behind their back. Let the guy in front of you cut over to the new checkout line when it opens up. Smile when you nearly get clipped in traffic. Let the other guy have the last piece of pizza or the bigger piece of cake. Split the check down the middle even though your friend ordered more stuff than you. Say hello to that employee smoking in front of Costco. Don’t have a heart attack when your seven-year-old walks in front of the TV during the 4^th quarter. Shrug and wipe of the treadmill when the lady before you neglects to do it. Resist verbal sparring in online comments. When your teenager does something stupid, remember all the stupid things you did when you were a teenager. Like that.

Next, ignore the negative.

First of all, realize that 99% of what you know about the world does not come from first-hand experience—it comes through the media which rigorously filters information and only disseminates that which promotes its insidious agenda. I’m not talking it’s “right- or left-wing media bias” agenda (although there’s plenty of that), I’m talking about its agenda of selling page views and harvesting ears and eyeballs.

It’s not that genuine atrocities don’t exist all around the planet; it’s that the media has a vested interest in making sure you know about murders, terrorists, disease, injustices, and disaster… and no incentive whatsoever to report on the billions of people who peacefully go about their business every day without spontaneously combusting.

In other words, the world’s not nearly as negative and scary as you think. And a big percentage of what you think is true probably isn’t even true in the first place.

“Global warming threatens the planet!” sells a lot better than “We have no idea if climate change exists!”

Think about it. How do you really know global climate change even exists? Or that it doesn’t exist? Or if it does exist that it’s a bad thing? Or if it does exist and it is a bad thing that there’s anything we can do about it? Or that we should even try to do something about it?

Before you start ranting about the issue (see, it’s so easy to get worked up!), understand my point: Unless you’re one out of 538 scientists on the planet who actually studies global climate, you have no first-hand knowledge. You’re getting your information from third parties who gather the raw data from the source, run it through their heavily “agendaed” ringers, and serve the pieces and parts they want you to consume on slick silver platters. You’re getting worked up over something that may or may not even be true, let alone a problem.

The unhappy truth is you’re upset because you enjoy being upset.

Instead of enjoying life through personal experiences, you’re finding meaning by vicariously attaching yourself to an agenda you probably can’t verify, almost certainly can’t influence, and most definitely can’t change. I probably made you mad by saying that, which only proves my point more.

Yea, I know there are legitimate problems. Here are you options for dealing with them:

1. Vote.
2. Send money to somebody else who’s actually doing something about it.
3. Become a crusader and personally do something about it. I don’t mean “whine about it on Facebook.” I mean sell your house, go to Africa, and dedicate your life to rescuing kids from the slave trade in Ghana. Otherwise, please move on to…
4. Ignore it.

Given the fact that there are probably well over 10,000 legitimate problems on this planet, and since you probably can’t actually do anything about more than two or three of them, do all of us a favor and SHUT UP about the other 9,997.

And more importantly, do yourself a favor and ignore them.

Don’t look them up on the Internet. Don’t buy books. Don’t engage in conversations. Just ignore these problems all together. Like they don’t even exist. Your blood pressure is high enough worrying about your cell signal bouncing back from space in less than one second.

So don’t spend even one second worrying about whether Ray Rice should be banned from the NFL for life for punching his girlfriend in the face. How on earth does that possibly affect you? You don’t need to be outraged at Miley Cyrus’s obscene twerking behavior to understand that yes, you should probably teach your children good morals. Of course it’s sad that Jihadists are beheading journalists; but besides voting, what can you possibly do about it? Forwarding me a snarky meme about Obama certainly isn’t going to help. Just move on.

Which finally, in this season of Thanksgiving, brings us to step three: Look for the good.

It’s a moral obligation you have to your soul.

When you’re perpetually dissatisfied with your life and constantly dissatisfied with the world that you live in—and when you realize that all your incessant whining really won’t change either—your sensory radar gets flipped on and you start searching for something—anything—to fill the void in your soul.

Want to know why people overeat? Or indulge in pornography? Or gamble their life away? It’s the same reason people waste their lives on the Internet, cheat on their spouses, indulge in drugs and alcohol, bury themselves in video games, binge-watch seventeen straight hours of football or Breaking Bad, or starve themselves to death on purpose. It’s also why people rant, rave, and recruit in the name of injustice-righting pseudo-causes.

They’re all different symptoms of the same underlying problem: they’re shallow, desperate attempts to make ourselves feel good when the world all around us—and more specifically, the world inside our heads—isn’t good.

Let me quote Rob Bell:

That is why gratitude is so central to the life God made for us. Until we can center ourselves on what we do have, on what God has given us, on the lives we do get to live, we’ll constantly be looking for another life… if we stop [being grateful]… we may forget [what we do have]. And that’s when the trouble comes.

Amen, Rob. Amen.

So let’s take a minute today—and every day—to reflect and be grateful for the good in our lives. Because you know what? If you look, you will find it. Like these:

• The grocery store offers over 30,000 items on the shelf.
• Including something like 137 varieties of cereal.
• You can watch movies on your phone. Anywhere. Any time.
• You didn’t have to clear the land your house sits on and build it with your own two hands.
• If you live in the south, you have air conditioning. Or heating in the north.
• You probably own at least ten pairs of shoes.
• You have working eyes that allow you to read this page.
• When you flip a switch, lights come on.
• The dude that gave a homeless guy the shoes right off his own feet.
• Your kids aren’t being drafted to go fight and be killed in a jungle somewhere.
• You can go to any church you want. Or not go at all.
• If your house catches on fire, a big red truck filled with brave men will come put it out.
• And if they are too late, an insurance company will buy you a new house.
• And your family photos won’t burn in the house fire because they’re in the cloud.
• Phones with TVs like on the Jetsons actually exist—there’s one in your pocket right now.
• You haven’t been truly hungry for years—maybe never in your life.
• Pizza.
• You can go to college by sitting in front of your computer—for very little money.
• If you’re a woman, you can get any job you can imagine.
• Same thing if you’re black.
• Or gay
• Or ugly.
• Compared to the rest of the world, you’re filthy, stinking rich no matter how much money you make.
• You can get just about any book you want from the library. For free.
• You have a toilet that flushes.
• And toilet paper.
• Your mother loves you.
• And so does God.

Have a great Thanksgiving. Everything is amazing. Try to be happy.

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