This is isn’t the most well-written piece I’ve found on the subject, but maybe it’s the most succinct. And that matters in an obsessive culture that keeps the pedal firmly on the floor every second of every day.
Unhappy people tend to look outward in their belief systems. They place their faith in lines of demarcation, in the empty idea that there’s something concrete and permanent in this universe. Seethingly, they hold fast to political identities, to social constructs taken as eternal biological fact, to guns!, to a worldview that maintains humans as being distinct from and superior to the rest of the planet. They believe they can take — that it is their duty to take! — and, if pressed, they would surely admit to a near fetishistic passion for the greatest hits of unhappiness, stuff like Genesis 1:26, Papa John’s and, doubtlessly, the 2016 Trump campaign.
They tend not to be creative or funny.
And while they’re really not worth harping on for too long (such a bore, honestly), it’s worthwhile to remind ourselves that there’s a whole lotta miserable fuckers out there, that there are people whose unhappiness can infect others and drive them to do horrible things in the name of a god (take your pick; gods aren’t always deities). These sorts have always been floating in the great waters of humanity. This goes back to the Garden, if I might borrow their language for a moment.
And so what of it?
There’s that old trope that says: The opposite of love isn’t hate — it’s indifference. And that’s true, certainly. But there’s another thing diametrically opposed to love: obstinacy.
“Love is the ultimate outlaw,” Tom Robbins wrote. “It just won’t adhere to any rules. The most any of us can do is to sign on as its accomplice. Instead of vowing to honor and obey, maybe we should swear to aid and abet. That would mean that security is out of the question. The words ‘make’ and ‘stay’ become inappropriate. My love for you has no strings attached. I love you for free.”
Sandy 