Happiness Is Not to Be Found

After reading several blogs, books, watching TED Talks and documentaries on the subject of happiness, I've found that there is little variance in the approach to the topic. When it comes to happiness, the question is always the same: how do we get there? Is it with things? No, a growing number of books and films will tell you of minimalists who became happy when they let go of mindless consumption of material. Is it with money? No, after you hit a certain threshold, you apparently don't get any happier.

Then how do we get it, everyone clamors. We want it so badly. They look so happy, how did they get there. Here we are, sad, we'd rather not be. Let us get there. Books, diets, lifestyle changes, yoga, meditation, daily affirmations, we will do it all, just let me get happiness.

So the demand is there.

And of course supply follows.

L@@K -- here is the secret!!! Come to this workshop, learn this practice, watch this video, read this book, hit up, up, down, down, left, right, left, right, B, A, Start, on the title screen, etc.

Happiness has become nothing more than a commodity in the world that we inhabit. Like any commodity, it can make money. And commodities make more money when the lack thereof is presented as a problem. Advertising typically presents a problem, usually one that they've made up, and the solution (e.g. you're far too fat to be likable, so you should start eating this terrible food to lose weight and be accepted, or unhappiness is an unnatural and debilitating state, but happiness can be achieved and sustained through this method). I am reluctant to admit that I am a consumer of self-help books, but please do not let that discredit me. Instead, let me use my experience in the self-help/"you're-a-badass-who-deserves-happiness-and-love" canon to better explain to you the ways in which this literature is a self-perpetuating reflection of our misleading society and, on a smaller scale, our own misguided souls, and how the beliefs that they sell hurt and limit us on a daily basis.

To help with this, I will employ some comics strips of my beloved, Bill Watterson.

The theme I'd like to point out in the above comics is change. Change is intrinsically related to happiness, not because it guarantees happiness or anything of the sort. No, happiness, as an animal emotion, is fleeting and adaptive. The formulas that self-help books and the like try to provide their readers fail to apply to every situation for this reason. There is no such thing as a mountain without valleys. Without the pitfalls of grief and loss, there would be nothing against which to contrast our elation and fulfillment.

By the same token, one might find contrast between contentment and happiness. The self-awareness that can be extremely useful to humans in many cases can also be detrimental when a human believes that happiness is a given-- that it is our default mode or what we deserve to be. The ideologies that tell us that we deserve to be happy also imply that we don't deserve to be sad and that the present moment could be better--we could be happier, just like we deserve.

What the books don't sell to us is that we are just fine the way we are. They don't stress the importance of being melancholy, grieving, afraid or jaded. They tell us that we need to buy books and adopt their words in order to be better people. They tell us to put our trust in them because they've made their lives better than we've made ours. They tell us to expect success and it will come to us. They tell us that we can make a lot of money or get our dream job or have an everlasting relationship. They tell us that we need to find happiness. They don't tell us that we are just fine as we are, that life exists without happiness, that sadness will be the emotional mode for some of us far more often than happiness, or that shit will go as it pleases with no regard to your life or your feelings. People die terribly all of the time. People are sad all of the time. It won't be with us all of the time, but happiness isn't the only worthwhile emotional setting in which life takes place.

You will hear time and time again that if you are not happy, you must be doing something wrong and that you owe it to yourself to get through whatever you are going through and persevere on your quest for happiness because you owe it to yourself to be happy. The only thing you owe yourself is to quest for nothing. Quest for nothing and let your emotions pour out (or not) as they may. Laugh at a funeral, cry on your birthday cake, curse the gods while you defecate, sit stonefaced at a comedy show, whatever. You don't quest for sadness or anger yet those always seem to be in stock; why do it for happiness? Why wear that mask?



Did you ever look at those Magic Eye stereogram posters from the 1990s? Sure you did.

The secret to seeing the hidden image is to stop looking so hard--you don't look directly at or for the image. You can't see it when you have it super close to your face--you have to move it away slowly and it is then that it reveals itself to you. When you relax your gaze, the image just creeps up on you. And not only is there the pleasure of actually seeing something new, but there is the pleasure that it was not forced and maybe even unexpected. Suddenly there is a 3D image that is known to you in a way that it was not known before and it's there for you to enjoy without you even asking it, let alone begging it, to be there. It's always there, whether you see it or not. When you are looking at the whole picture, there are other phenomena to revel in and appreciate even when you don't see it. If you saw the 3D image the whole time, it wouldn't be nearly as exciting or enjoyable when you did. That's where the comparison ends. Happiness is not some visual parlor trick. Happiness is not man-made. What's man-made is the notion that happiness should exist. Searching for a 3D image after 5 minutes is torturous; don't make that your entire life. Happiness is not to be found. Just give up the search every now and then.




Also, I want to make comics.

This is You

I found my pen again.

It's been seven months or something, but whatever, right? Sometimes you fall off the horse, you lose your pen, you get distracted by the things that don't even matter to you, you find yourself with head and body aches like you've never felt before, staring at the pillow next to you when your dog (your best friend and the only constant in your life outside yourself) dies; you find yourself staring at that same pillow before you go into work and when you get back from work. You watch your tears sink into the grey pillowcase and into the cotton stuffing beneath it and after you're done crying, you start to wonder what happens to all of that moisture--does it turn to mold if you let it sit for too long? You go and play tennis when someone asks you to because you're tired of being suffocated by your own thoughts and sometimes they pay you for it. You start to go for runs in the morning. You workout. You're starting to get pretty damn good at pull-ups. You start to read self-help books--books that tell you about how you're awesome, you create your own reality, and how the universe reflects the frequency of the energy you put out, whether that be high or low. You resolve to put out high frequency energy. You start a project and are determined to finish it, knowing it will take months, maybe even years until you're done. It makes you feel nice. It's when you start taking care of yourself like this that you start to think that maybe you really don't need the love and acceptance of all of those around you. That in reality, they do love you. They love you and they don't realize it. And even if you lost all of those dearest to you, you know that you would still love yourself and feel at home in this all-connected world.

Things are going to be great. You're on the up and up now.

You're standing up straight and you're shaving daily and you uninstall Tinder.

You have important things to do now. You're building something you're really into. You're building yourself.

But then something happens.

The same way you edged out of a self-loathing hole that focused on a past filled with mistakes, you edge back into it. You wake up and you want nothing to do with anything outside of your bed. You don't even necessarily want to be in bed, but you don't want to be anywhere at all and sleep is a retreat, so you stay.

You sputter. Your brain is slow. No amount of coffee can help you wake up because you've gotten used to drinking pots at a time in your super productive phase.

And all of this time, I haven't meant you. I've meant me obviously. Sometimes it is nice to hide behind the second-person narrative because it means I do not have to take accountability.

There's a Kendrick Lamar song called "Real" and in each verse he talks about different people and the things that they love (e.g. material objects, conflict-filled lifestyles) to fill the holes in their hearts. He finishes each verse with "But what's love got to do with it when you don't love yourself?" I think about that a lot. How can anything else matter when you don't love yourself?

More recently, I was learning about the history of advertising. A common advertising method is inventing a need or a problem and then providing a solution with the advertised product. The most well-known example of this would be Listerine inventing halitosis (bad breath) and putting info about the new disease on their bottles. The symptoms of bad breath, aside from the smell, were namely that you would not be accepted socially, professionally or romantically. The product itself is never what the consumer wants. It is the cure, the answer to their problems, the success that they think will bring them happiness. Remember, "ignorance is bliss." Had the ad campaign not stretched so far, most people would not have cared about bad breath, or at least would not have associated it with an unseemly, unprofessional, unattractive person. Happiness and self-love are sacrificed when we believe that there is something wrong with us simply for being ourselves as humans (who have breath that smells because the mouth is a dark, wet orifice that gets filled with food that decays).

And I have been loving myself as best I can. It's such a tough thing to do sometimes. You can't walk down the street or get on social media without being put to shame for something. Maybe it's being skinny, maybe it's being fat, maybe it's looking like a meathead, maybe it's looking like you're too feminine or too masculine, maybe it's looking white in a non-white neighborhood, or vice versa. Sometimes it's people knowing your story before they know you and it's you buying into that story. More often it is you creating the stories and, like a talented ventriloquist having a conversation with a puppet, having your own fictional voices spewed back onto you. Whatever the case, most of your guilt, anxiety, depression is self-created.  You apologize. You feel like you're not good enough. You feel like you've done something wrong. You find the proof in that someone you like does not like you back. You find the proof in that one time you said something mean to someone. You find the proof in whatever you want, just to believe that you actually are something far less than what a money-hungry society, and now you, thinks you should be.

You trap yourself in a tiny prison. You say, "This is you. You are in this cell. Do not move. I want to know who/what/where/why/how you are, always. If I do not know this about you, then I don't know how you fit into the world around me, I do not know what you should want, I do not know how other people should view you, and I do not know who you are." Even though it's yourself! Why do you do this? Why do you have these pages-long dialogues with yourself on blog posts? Why do you sit in your room killing your free time, thinking about all of the ways you have messed up in the past and turning the prison in your head into a reality?

Why do you keep switching back to second person? It's in your hands.

It's in my hands.

When I die, I'll just be an idea in someone else's head. Hopefully my loved ones won't have too much pain but by then I won't have hopes or pains and I won't feel sympathy. It will be impossible for me to feel sympathy. All of our lives are relatively short; length of time is of no consequence. I am essentially just a (somewhat) unique assembly of corporeal energy and matter that could just as well take the form of a rock until I figure out that 

whatever I am doing or feeling is EXACTLY what I should be doing or feeling. 

Never mind what others might be doing or feeling. That's for them. I'm only one person and my life is short. If I figure that out, then it will be a life well-lived for me. Self-love is the purest form of love and the energy it radiates is palpable and I must hold onto that instead of the bars of my self-created prison. It is in my hands to free myself.


I love them, I love when I love her,
I love so much, I love when love hurts
...
But what love got to do with it when I don't love myself?

Crossing the Abyss

It was cold and I didn't feel like going into my apartment yet. I sat in my car with the Australian Cattle Dog named Peppy, hoping maybe something would happen--something would fall from the sky and crack open on my windshield and there would be a bright and mystical light inside and I could bathe in it and swallow it and become it. I would not ever need to go into my apartment again. The problems of this life would concern me no longer. I would be dynamic and changing, but without judgement or ego and I would own no opinions nor would the opinions of others be known to me.

But instead my ex walked by.

And after she had passed, hopefully without noticing me, I began to cry into my hands, alone in the dark gravel lot, a cold, fall night, brown, trident-shaped leaves pittering onto my minivan's hood. My words came soon after, each one escaping my mouth with warm, visible breath: "My life is so pathetic. I love a person who will never ever love me again. I don't know what I am even doing here. I have nothing keeping me."

I imagined posting something that read like those private, spoken words as a facebook status, as someone who has integrated their social media accounts so thoroughly (invasively) into their lived life is wont to do from time to time. I thought about what a brutally honest facebook character would say or think over the internet. Something like, omg nick stop overdoing this whole whiny my life sucks routine. And I thought about how they had a point and I wondered why I wasn't changing my life.

I wondered why I view unrequited love as a pathetic thing instead of a beautiful thing. Why I am not picking up and leaving. Why I am not quitting yet another job in which I am taken advantage of and underpaid. Why I am not closer to my family. Why I am not somewhere where Peppy can run around in a backyard. Why I am forcing myself to endure another long, harsh winter without a tribe of people whom I can call my own.

You know those phases that kids go through where they ask, "Why?" incessantly? They ask why in response to every single thing. Get dressed. Why? Because it's cold and we have to go outside. Why? Because you have to wait for the bus to get to school. Why? Because you need to be educated. Why? So you can be respected and succeed in this world. Why?

Eventually the parents stop answering, and say, "I don't know, Nicholas, because I said so!"

And even at that young age, the child picks up that the parent doesn't know the answer to all of these questions. Somewhere along the way, the child's parents stopped asking why. They learn that it is not easy to ask why. They learn that the bright and mystical things around them have become dull and unexceptional. The things they do are done because they have been doing them long enough that they have become routine. It is comfortable to keep thinking in the same way and not ask why. It makes sure that there is no thought that might criticize their life choices or upset the status quo.

But.

What happens when I ask why?

I feel abandoned.

Why?

I am alone.

Why?

I don't know.

Ask yourself. Why?

I messed up. I loved someone more than I loved myself.

Why?

She made me feel valuable.

Why?

I guess because she thought I was.

Why?

I did things for her. 

Why?

Because she was special to me.

Why? 

She was sweet and tender and liked and disliked a lot of things that I liked and disliked. We thought alike. And I liked that. She was a lot of the things that I liked about myself and that I wanted to be, and few of the things that I disliked about myself.

Why did you end things?

Because we needed to grow. Both of us. We loved each other. We enjoyed our time together, but we had come to a fork in the road and realized we had to take different exits to get to where we wanted to go.

And I don't need to make a road trip with someone all of the time. Sometimes, I can enjoy being alone in the world, with the sky being big and watchful, the wind being talkative and affectionate.

Why?

I am my own private world. If I don't have myself, this conversation is not possible, no dialogue, no interaction is possible. I am a bright and mystical light that I don't fully understand yet. And I want to enjoy and be mesmerized by that.

Even in looking for a partner or friends, I find that the people that I love are sometimes reflections of my ideal self. I find I am attracted to people who are motivated, sweet, caring, accepting, open-minded, kind, funny because those are the things I want to be--those are the things I consider to be my defining qualities when I am at my best.  The hope that I can find someone who actually is my ideal self is doomed to fail unless I am looking within.

As priest and spiritualist Thomas Merton puts it, "What can we gain by sailing to the moon if we are not able to cross the abyss that separates us from ourselves? This is the most important of all voyages of discovery, and without it, all the rest are not only useless but disastrous."

I am certain that the best thing that I could have had is that option of waiting and wallowing in my car, crying into my hands, and asking myself why. I thought those days spent absorbed in my own thought and crippling self-pity might never end, but now that they have, I can see they were not as unbearable as I made them seem. It was necessary. It was a privilege. In loss, we gain. We learn that importance is relative.

I am leaving Poughkeepsie. I have quit my job. I am picking up and leaving. None of that is me. I have been here for six years, but I have always known this was just a pit stop. I am going to be closer to family in the hope that I can know myself intimately and better understand the world around me through that intimacy, instead of focusing on work, making money, going to clubs, waiting for my ex to come back, or whatever other misguided advice I have been given in the past three months.

It is amazing how difficult leaving seemed it would be only a few short weeks ago when I first started writing this post. Now, it's the obvious choice.

Thank you to the 845 for helping to mold me.

Here's to me and mine and to you and yours. Here's to crossing the abyss.

Superpowers

There is a 12-year-old girl that I got to know over the summer who often asks me, "How are you, Nick? Are you enjoying life?"

She asks with a suspicion that I am indeed not enjoying life. I say yes in a pitch that is too high. She asks me repeatedly because she does not believe that answer. She wants me to be honest and she keeps giving me the chances to do so.

She asks, "Nick, if you could describe your life with one adjective, what adjective would you use? You can't use 'ineffable'--that's my word--it means too great to be described by words."

I never know what to say. Am I enjoying life? Probably not nearly as much as I should be. An adjective? Um, jeez. I am not sure.

Since I never have an answer, she asks another tennis instructor what he thinks my adjective is. He is a big Long Island man, Italian, mostly bald but with facial hair that refuses to be inhibited. He looks at me for a second and thinks.
"I would say subdued," he says gently.

Well then. I would not have guessed that.

An old friend called me the other day and at the end of the short conversation said, "Nick, you're going to be okay. Try to be happier," unprompted.
I had not hinted that I was upset or mentioned anything that might lead him to believe that I was upset. I asked him if he thought that I was a sad person.
"Yeah, I think you are."

That threw me off because I always thought of myself as a happy person. If you were to ask my family members, I'm the biggest goofball any of them know. In college, the opportunity to start anew paired with the correct doses of alcohol made sure I was a party-goer, the life of the party, never afraid to have fun.

I have battled with depression on occasion, probably as early as middle school.
Sometimes it's bad.
But it was never anything I talked to my family about. I never considered that I might be depressed. I thought depression meant you had to be lying on the floor, basically unable to care for yourself in any capacity, you were so miserable and sad.

And that is just the thing. I do not consider myself sad. I am happy.

I am just trapped in a pit that is only just above my head. The walls are angled outward and I can climb up the incline, often pulling my torso out, but there's this sludge lining the walls that sends me slowly sliding back down each time I do. I love to smile. I love to joke and hang out and make new friends.

It makes me sad and angry that I am in this pit. It makes me sad and angry that this state-of-mind influences relationships that I care about. I want to be better. I want to be myself--the self with which I identify. I know that funny, laughing, trusting identity better than the "sad" and "subdued" one. Others apparently know the latter. I wish others knew the former the way I do.

Around the time my depression started, I had already been deeply immersed in the world of comic books for years. I was a superhero purist. I did not understand why other genres of comic book existed (I feel differently about this now, and love graphic novels as a storytelling medium).

Since a tyke, I would daydream about the day I would gain my own special superpowers and become a vigilante capable of saving the world. What an occupation that would be. I knew in the back of my mind that it would never happen--that I would never levitate about the town, lift trucks, and make bullets melt in the air, but I still hoped for the fateful gift to be bestowed upon me.

And this fantasy went on until I was maybe 14 (old!). I would emerge, reborn, the perfect creature I was capable of being, sculpted of marble, and fighting for the good of others. My alter ego would be better than Nicholas Jay. It would be formless, nameless, capable of anything, perfect.

Quite an expectation from a boy who would sweat or cry if he ever felt pressured to form words with his mouth in a public place. The comparison of reality made me feel pathetic.

I remember reading a book called Winning State: Tennis. One of the cornerstone phrases of the book was "Dream Big-- It's your Power!"

Even entering college, I remember, I wanted to be incredible. I dreamed of perfecting my body and mind. I wanted to reach the limit of human potential. I would go to early morning workouts and try and do thorough readings of all of my assignments and, quite frankly, I failed miserably. I would fall asleep in the middle of the day, in class and sometimes in the middle of my room, on the carpet instead of my bed. I did not speak in class. I did not get good grades. I gained twenty pounds, largely of muscle, but was still weak by most standards.

Idolatry.

Throughout life, I have often put on a mask in an attempt to keep others from knowing Nicholas Jay. I wanted to be the perfect caped crusader that it was impossible to be without the assistance of a non-existent radioactive arachnid or some higher power. I wanted to be something really special, something to write home about. I wanted to be something I wasn't.

And today, in a train of thought worth celebrating, I'm realizing that maybe I am wasting the laughter Nicholas Jay wants to share with this world. All for a shallow desire to be special that is rooted in a self-conscious, self-doubting insecurity. Reality will always look meek when you have no faith in your own identity. Reality will always feel like a sludge-ridden pit when you are not a superhero. I am not saying depression is completely within my control, but by god, I am going to stop feeding it with my delusions.

Maybe it's time for me to stop dreaming and figure out how to really enjoy this life.  Maybe it's time to find my adjective. Maybe I should share the secret identity that I have been keeping from those around me.

Maybe sometimes it's okay to let dreams die.

Hope Feeds the Ghost

Have I finally found the one?

I am not asking the question you think: Is this the person I love so truly that I will spend the remainder of my days with them, so perfectly compatible that I will never yearn for another human being's touch?

No. Cynics, rejoice. I am asking if this is the failed relationship that will end my desire to enter an emotional, spiritual, sexual bond again. I am asking if this is the failed relationship that will keep me guarded from falling again. I used to think that that was one of my most beautiful qualities--my ability to open up and fall in love again even after being hurt as a result of previous openings and fallings. I still think it is a beautiful quality. But I do not think it is one that I want anymore.

C was the best person in my life but she is essentially a ghost now. I am stuck alone with it. It haunts me but no one else can see it. They see a mess all about me and they are sorry. They carry on. I cannot see much of a point, but I try to carry on also, always something of a follower.

I have lost faith in other people. I have lost faith in myself as I grow to be more and more like them. I do not want to enter any new relationship, thinking this is enjoyable, this is possibly the person who will care for and appreciate me like I think I deserve. There is this underlying hope  in those thoughts that seems to be continually unmet. It is a hope that keeps you running in circles in your own haunted house.

This past relationship was my best. You could not always see it through the emotional instability of my depression, the stresses of my work and financial struggles, but I was the happiest I had been since I was a small child. There was not a romantic relationship I felt more sure about in my life. I did not once regret that this might be the last person to whom I had a serious attraction or for whom I had strong, romantic feelings.

I have dreams about her. I cannot even escape my thoughts of her in sleep. I want to scream at these specters to go away until my lungs collapse from the repeated effort. I want to hate her and get on with my life. But I cannot forget her tenderness when the rest of the world felt so hard and unrelenting. I cannot forget how her laugh made the tips of my toes and fingers sing with joy in a tiny, silent chorus. How her eyes made my anger and worries melt out of my pores and my days. I cannot thank her enough for all that she gave me. And yet all I can think about is myself and how much I wish this worked.

I am so angry at her for how easy this seems to be for her. But I do not know how easy it is for her. I am only projecting. But nonetheless, I feel like it should have been harder, and I am angry. Maybe not at her. But at myself, there is no doubt. I want to spit on my face and call myself a coward in the coldest hiss I can muster. I am so mad at myself for letting the insecurities that developed during a previous relationship affect this one. I am so mad at myself for not listening when she tried to talk, when I could not look past my fear of the relationship ending to see the problems that would end it. I am so mad at C for not trying harder to tell me. I am so mad at her for not giving me time to fix what I could. I am so mad at her for giving me up. I am so mad that the time I had to spend with my best friend and confidant, my lover and supporter, who both complemented and supplemented me, is over. I am so mad that my hope still lives on. Maybe you can make this work still, Nick. Maybe you were right. Maybe she loves you still and will want to be with you if you just bring it up one more time, Nick. Maybe the dreams will stop and you can hold her again. Maybe you can reaffirm that belief you have been taught throughout life--the one that there is someone out there for everyone. I know you want to stop believing that, but isn't she the best thing that's happened to you? Are you just going to give her up? Don't you love her?

And as my fingers slip and I let her go, I realize that I really do love her. And there is nothing wrong with that. That does not haunt me. I am sure I will love her for the rest of my life.

What haunts me is the hope I still hold for us. I always thought our love for each other was strong. I do not want to be wrong or else I have been lying to myself for a while now. I don't think I am wrong about that. But hope has served as nothing but a painful reminder of my loss. As Mad Max says in Fury Road, "Hope is a mistake you know. If you can't fix what's broken, you will go insane."

I hope she stays as she is--truly thoughtful and giving. The only broken things I can work on are the things I messed up on in the relationship. I will work on those. The insecurity, the jealousy, the dependence--those are the things I want to fix. Otherwise, I really will keep running in circles, going insane in this scary place.

How to Let Go of the Dreams You Did Not Even Know You Had?

I would like to go to sleep. But my mind reels and it churns, it dreams and it ponders, a lost poodle, eating a bug, hoping to provide an acceptable answer to its grumbling stomach.

She had just gotten back from a weekend trip in Vermont. I missed her terribly. She missed me too.

We had spoken before about her discovering she had a newfound attraction to women. We stayed together because she wanted to be with me despite that. Summer passed and we were apart, and I hoped that her feeling would remain the same--she would want to stay with me and her desire to act upon her recently-discovered sexuality would subside.

I went with her and her family on a nice vacation. 5 days. Then we drove up to New York together. She stayed with me at my apartment while she moved in and got her room ready. Then Vermont.

Now this.

I called my mother. I called my sister. I called my brother.

All missed calls.

I posted on a facebook group. Several responses telling me to message them. I don't even know any of them.

Spoke to an acquaintance about it because that's all I really have anymore. I had a best friend in her. Everyone else (aside from Peppy) kind of drops miles below her.

My sister calls me back. We both cry together. She tells me that I am an "amazing man," that she is "so proud" to call me her brother, and that she is glad that I could be the person who was there when C needed to discover her sexuality.

I am glad too. But a part of me is so selfish. I will never be able to forgive myself for saying, "Go home; we're breaking up." I hope C never forgets. I want her to find all that she is looking for, but god knows that I want her.

I hope C walks in the door as I finish typing this sentence...
maybe...
no.

I love her still. She loves me still (I wonder if she will still love me as long as I still love her). We did not want this. But I think we needed it.

I am so glad that I could be the person to help her along. I am. But it also feels like death. How to let go of the dreams you did not even know you had? The dreams had by your partner, the dreams talked about only in your deepest doldrums of slumber, the dreams you were about to have tonight, the dreams you shared and wish you could have back just for yourself, the ones with the beautiful green grass in front of a house under a glass sky where you could live until you died.

I will be right here, residing in that fading dream, for as long as it stays. I will wait right here, where it is oh-so-nice. Please, join me if you find that works for you. This dream is not the same without you.

Facebook Feuding: Same-Sex Marriage in the Wake of the Charleston Shooting

Finally, some good news in America! Same-sex marriage is legal across the States! This is an incredible milestone and June 26th will forever mark a beautiful step toward putting the ideal of Equality into practice.

But, unfortunately, not all of the "Nation's Homophobic Bigots Pack It In," as The Onion jokes.



This status is a reminder of that:

"Hey the supreme court did something else stupid in support of the immoral. What else is new?"

I do not know about you, but that was pretty different from what I was thinking. You could say it was as far opposite of what I was thinking as possible.

It is no surprise that this poster uses the Bible as the standard for their own personal moral code--they make that very apparent. Of course, their ultimate defense of this moral code is the Bible. Why defend the Bible's moral code with anything but the Bible's moral code? Flawless plan!

There are a ton of comments and replies on this thread, most of them the original poster talking about how "frustrating" the whole ordeal is, disagreeing with anything that might consider progress or a transition from the Old Testament.

I hate Facebook feuds. I tend to stay away from them. I have much time to think about what I want to say, which is great (despite the profuse sweat I usually work up in that time period), but then when it's posted, it is under your opponent's evil microscope, being probed for weakness. But how could I possibly let this slide?

I responded with this (writing this off of memory, but I think it is verbatim):

"Hi Henry. I am curious if you consider homosexuality to be a choice (because in actuality, it is a personality trait). I read that you are concerned for gay couples' children. I happen to know several people about my age who were raised by gay parents and they are beautiful, kind, brilliant and functional, sociable human beings. I wouldn't worry about them. Also, if you are using the Bible to create an environment of exclusion, fear, and judgment instead of Love and Acceptance, the religion's best lessons/qualities, then you are using it for the worst of reasons. What you have said is extremely hurtful to some people, that they are immoral for accepting and embracing their own sexual orientation. I hope that, though the Bible is in print, you can change your mind someday soon."

I decided that that was tactful and could create further discussion. I was genuinely interested in what response he would cook up for me, as disgusting as it could potentially be.

Enter.

End of Facebook friendship.

Bye, Henry! I am sorry that you decided to remove me from your friend list instead of responding, but I understand that frustration does not necessarily facilitate conversational or reasoning skills. Best of luck to you as you attempt to navigate through the rest of your life in a dynamic and ever-changing 21st century. I do not expect that it will be very easy for you.

By the way, my comment took place at about 8AM, so I highly doubt he was in some sort of drunken facebook-deletion rage. But, oh well, what can you do?

The same thing happened when I confronted people posting the Dylan Roof, Lee Boyd Malvo memes in response to the Dylan Roof, Eric Garner memes. I have one screenshot that I will post below. The other post was removed after I commented! And I didn't get a screenshot! Woe is me!

But he argued that the race of the person being arrested doesn't matter, as long as they do not resist, they will be treated well.  I argued that Black people have an overwhelming statistical likelihood to be subjected to police violence, I listed some stats (26% of all police killings were of Black people last year which is double their 13% representation in the US populous) and I posted this video to show how many altercations begin for no reason other than that the subject of harassment is Black:
Video Captures EXACTLY How Cops Treat Black People

No response, meme deleted.

Here is the other conversation (in which I had a tag team partner):

No response. Meme deleted.

I have since seen several posts by both of the original posters of the meme that seem to be continuations of our conversations though, as if to say, "Ha! I was right!" (in addition to a plethora of other terribly insensitive things that seem to come so naturally to them at their entitled vantage points, cliffs shared with the eagles, so far above). I did not comment on them mostly because it was tiresome and there are too many people like that on my newsfeed.

What bothers me is, though they deleted their posts (or me), I feel like I acted as a vaccine that made them stronger, with my single strand of common sense, which they are now immune to, having seen it and been given ample time to recover from it in their virtual solace. Did I make my opposing viewholder stronger by not arguing more diligently? Maybe I spread my focus too wide. Maybe I need to pick one person and just counter every thoughtless thing they might say. Then maybe I can get them to understand my thoughts. To succumb to my "virus" if you want to keep the analogy going (eek, maybe drop the analogy).

Let us conduct a social experiment! I would encourage each of you to latch on to your closest conservative facebook friend and counter everything they say, and if each of us does so, who knows, maybe Bernie Sanders will be elected as our next President. At the very least, you might get a few dumb posts redacted.