Just Tears

Rather amusingly, an acquiescent friend of mine once bemoaned the state of affairs in the world today, noting that when you're yay high in suffering neighbours, you can never be truly content. Though its heart is vaguely in the right spot, this flawed logic overlooks the simple reality that an entirely sad world is even worse than a partially sad one. Next to everyone knows that whirl piece is fundamentally impossible at this stage in evolution; happiness conflicts, and there's always going to be an angry or half-dead neighbour regardless of policy. With his (or her) reasoning, we should thus be stripping the grins from our cheeks and dourly trudging the streets with crudely fashioned apocalyptic signs, occasionally stopping to cry on a newspaper or berate a happy person. Sure, it may not make the place any nicer, but we'll be true! And maybe our guilt will by halved, too.

Whinging, by its very nature, is unproductive — or, more rightly, counter-productive. I, for one, would rather a fiercely optimistic philanthropist abroad than a grousing cynic, slipping on his or her tears when there's work to be done. And I'm sure ill-lotted Afro-kids would rather be greeted with a warm, compassionate smile than a hopeless quiver of pity. Samples: How Can I Bring A Child Into This Horrible, Horrible World! How Can I Enjoy Not Bringing A Child Into This Horrible, Horrible World? How Can I Justify This Gold Watch? Oh, the woe! It doesn't matter how bad it is, either; there are ways to make it worse — ways only the most wet-eyed bawler knows.

Despite its overexposure, smelling flora once in a while is still sage advice. I'm sure even hell can be enjoyed in the right light.