There are things that will never cease to amaze me. One of them is man’s endless stupidity. I’m talking about people who feel the constant need to shit on good things in other people’s lives, argue vehemently over meaningless things, spread outright lies and try to rile up people for no good reason.
Sure, the internet is a wonderful thing, there’s freedom of speech for most of us and I can take a joke… There’s all these excuses you usually hear, but don’t be fooled by them. There’s more to it. Do some people just like their own voice so much or are they simply better than the rest of us?
Nope. These people just haven’t figured out that their opinion is just that: their opinion. They haven’t realized that no matter how strongly they feel about something, other people might have different opinions. They haven’t figured out the difference between facts and opinions yet. They always need to be right.
Sure everybody thinks they’re right – who would want to keep on arguing knowing they’re wrong (aside from politicians and others in position to gain money/power from lying)? – but when it comes to opinions, these people just don’t get that others might not agree with them, or even worse, not care about their opinion at all.
Nonetheless, still – in 2011 – I keep on running into people who can’t figure out the difference between facts and opinions. Even better, they assume their opinions and personal taste are far superior to everybody else’s and the infidels must be converted!
So let me set the record straight: I am fully aware there are smarter, funnier, stronger, faster, better and wealthier people than me out there. I can be outdone in almost everything I will ever do in my life. Actually everything aside from one thing: being me. I am trying to live my life to the fullest, doing things I love and getting the most out of them. If someone doesn’t like it, so be it. I don’t mind and you can tell me so, but if you think your opinion means anything more than that to me, I feel very sorry for you.
I do not need others to tell me how to live my life and I don’t expect others to understand all of my choices, but in the end, I’m living my own life and making my own decisions. I don’t need the lives of others to fulfill me as a person and to give my life a meaning.
PS – The Lives of Others is a film I watched after Anna-Lynne Williams mentioned it in an interview some years back. I liked it and I like Anna-Lynne’s music, too: Trespasser William and Lotte Kestner.
“You want to ditch your job for a month to go on tour? You’re an idiot, you have a great job. Don’t risk it for something stupid like that.”
“You don’t like Slayer? They’re the best band ever. All other bands suck.”
” You haven’t welcomed the love of God into your life? You’ll go to hell and so will everyone else who lives a life of sin according to the Bible.”
“You don’t want to have kids? You’re so selfish. It is your duty to carry on the family name.”
“You’re going to leave everything and move to Finland? That’s fucking stupid. Why would you move there?” BONUS: “You’re going to import your car to Finland? What a dumb decision. That thing’s just gonna die in a few months anyway.”
Seems like no matter how I live my life or what decisions I make, there’s always someone who feels the need to tell me how bad I’m fucking up, according to them. I agree with you so hard; people need to learn that my life is mine to live, and if I really want to make (what they think is, or might actually turn out to be,) a mistake, then I have every right to. But I need to learn not to let their negative thoughts and words affect me and cause me to start doubting myself.
I envy your confidence and inner strength…e-mail me some kplzthx.
PS – My mom and I started watching The Lives of Others Friday, but I fell asleep halfway through (got up at 4am that day for work), so Mom returned it…I’ve been wanting to go finish it, so I’ll take this blog post as a sign that I should :)
Italics-tag-closing fail.
We could probably compare notes for days and days, unless there were more important things to do. Maybe we should write a book now and release it in 20 years. It could be called either “Turns out you were wrong” or “I failed just like you said I would” depending on what happens in the next 20 years. :P
Making mistakes is important, but making the same mistakes twice or more is just dumb. I’ve actually got few sort of related posts coming up, so I’ll just… uh… email you the link once I post them, hah!
PS – I fixed the glitch. ;)
No need to e-mail; I’m following your blog-thingy here with my google-reader-thing. Yup, I’m so good at the technologies.
Thanks for fixing the tag…good to see one of us knows what they’re doing!