Gratitude

A genius post from Ricki... A fine description of the casual ingratitude of everyday life, the constant feeling of being aggrieved, all stemming from the far-overgrown entitlement some feel is their birthright.

It shouldn't be amazing that a people who are losing their sense of a God above them think that everything else is beneath them. Still, I do find a heavy helping of irony in Ricki's observation that people behave as if inconveniences, minor and major, are specifically aimed at them - they discount a God in the heavens to bless, but attribute misfortune fully to enemy action. It's as if they really do believe in the Devil, albeit a "tamed" concept of him: an infernal mischief-maker who seeks merely to vex and annoy.

Considering the effect these vexations have to rob some people of all joy, peace, and good humor, they ought to consider re-upgrading him.

Ricki does point out (and I agree) that we all have these moments where we huff and puff and blow our own houses in. What? I wasn't accepted? You gave away our table? Whaddya mean, sold out? But there's a difference between a person who gripes and a griper. We all get exasperated - but not everyone enjoys the feeling of being put-upon that exasperation brings. Some people, odd as it seems, don't seem to really come alive until they're complaining about ill-usage, real or imagined. As long as they have a resentment against someone else, they are justified in being as mean and dismissive as they please. In short, they hold grudges. Each one entitles the bearer to raise himself one notch on the tote board of self-regard.

This puts one in an awkward spot, considering the popularity of the Friday Flip-Off over at It Comes in Pints. What is that if not a full-blown case of "Why Me?"

Well, what it is is a healthy way to share our vexations without letting them define us. The things people kvetch about over there aren't the things outside anyone's control. As I recall, there have been very few (if any) "Winter can flip off" sorts of commenting* - but there is a great deal of "Lousy drivers can flip off." In other words, the FFO targets casual rudeness, the complete inability of some people to follow through on common decency: tailgaters and line-crashers, the selfish and the ridiculous. We're not mad because we're entitled to better, but because it's amazing how little other people think of their fellows. In some cases the people in question are putting others in physical danger by their thoughtlessness.

If one didn't say something about it, one would instead be forever nursing that hurt, looking for a way to pay everyone back for it - that's the behavior that Ricki's talking about, and it's the opposite of a public forum for scolding.

*There was, however, the fabulously insane font flip-off thread (scroll down a little). (OH - and LANGUAGE ALERT. They don't say "flip.")
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