Empty Platitudes

Blame the Internet.

If you are a regular denizen of a social network or three (and who isn’t), you’ve probably had your fill of those stupid pictures with worn-out sayings that are supposed to offer inspirational and uplifting messages about life. They are called memes, and I can never figure out if they should be pronounced “meems” or “mee-mees.”

Of course there are other categories of memes: cat memes, memes containing just about any other kind of animal, political memes (containing even worse kinds of animals), memes about coffee, memes about beer, memes about bacon, general jerk-off memes, and… well you get the idea. Not that any of this really matters.

But it’s the memes that are intended to be highly philosophical and spiritually uplifting that I am focused on here. The point is that I know that I am pretty fed up with asinine sayings like:

• “Time heals all wounds”
• “Tomorrow is another day”
• “Live each moment like it’s your last”

Blyetch!  I can feel my stomach turning already.

Now there are some genuinely original and inspiration messages out there, and I’ve posted a few of them in my time, and none of them involve bacon (although a few have involved cats or coffee). But what really riles me are the blandly simplistic ones that so many people “ooh” and “ahh” about, and that get shared and copied ad nauseam, but which are either devoid of any significant meaning or are actually just pure BS: the empty platitudes.  Let’s look at a few of the more infamous ones.

“Everything happens for a reason.”  This one is supposed to make you feel better when something bad happens. When your wife or girlfriend runs off with an Argentine Tango instructor, a convicted felon, or a dwarf professional wrestler, this stupid saying is supposed to ease your pain? When you bet your life savings on a “sure thing” tip you got from a shady bookie named Lucky Louie and end up losing everything on a horse that tripped and broke a leg right out of the starting gate, this is supposed to make you feel like you’re not really a hopelessly gambling-addicted moron.

You see, it’s not because you screwed up and did something stupid. It’s not because your wife or girlfriend was just a heartless user who was taking advantage of you until someone better (like a muscle-bound dwarf) came along, and you were just too blind to see it. It’s not because you were weak-minded enough to fall for some improbable scam sold to you by a criminal lowlife. No, no… it’s because there is some greater reason in the universe that you’re just not aware of yet, which of course, makes everything better. It makes me want to barf!

“There are no mistakes, just lessons to be learned.”  Oh, please… spare me. Yes, there are mistakes! There are big, stupendous, unbelievable mistakes. But, hey, don’t worry, and don’t take responsibility for botching it. Don’t take responsibility for your life at all. Twenty years from now, after finishing your daily pint of vodka, you’ll be able to see how the wonderful life you have would not have been possible if you hadn’t made that monumental blunder years earlier. Be glad for your mistakes.

Of course, we have to learn from our mistakes and avoid making them again in the future. But this does not diminish the fact that mistakes are, in fact, mistakes. Sometimes a mistake happens because we have no idea about how things work or what might happen – we are totally naive. And by making that mistake and learning something from it, we reduce our naiveté a bit.

But it was still a mistake. And when we make the same mistake again, or mess up in something about which we’ve been warned or had some other prior knowledge, then there is nothing else you can say about it: it was a boneheaded screw-up!

“If it’s meant to happen, it will happen when the time is right.” And its related platitude: “Good things come to those who wait.”

Great… and while you’re waiting for the time to be right, others realize that there is no “righter” time than now and are actively taking what you’re waiting for. And then you can console yourself by just saying that some mysterious universal power did not want this for you because it wasn’t handed to you on a safe, silver platter.

This is the ultimate excuse to avoid taking action to shape events, to steer clear of responsibility, and to let your fears control your actions (well… inactions, really). Just leave it in the hands of some unseen outside force and do nothing yourself. It’s so much easier. But then, never getting out of bed, or working, or putting out real effort for the things you want is easier too. It’s so much simpler to just go with the flow and take what the stream of life puts before you, to just exist and accept everything that comes or doesn’t come.

Just to clarify, I DO believe in the Power of Intention and that the universe works with you to create good (or bad) things in your life based on the intentions you put out there through your words and thoughts. But it only works according to the strength of your intention and the amount of work and perseverance you put into it yourself. Too many people hear about the Power of Intention and think, “Cool, if I just wish and wish and wish hard enough, my dreams will come true. And if they don’t come true, it’s because the universe is wiser than me, and it just was not in ‘the plan.’”

But it doesn’t work this way. You can’t just sit and wait for the universe to “give” things to you, and you can’t use this “if it’s meant to happen” as an excuse to allow your fears to keep you from taking action toward what you want. If you want something, you have to take action, go for it, and start now!

“Don’t be sad it’s over – be glad it happened.”  No, be glad it’s over – be really glad it’s over. If it ended, for whatever reason, then it probably wasn’t making you very happy before the bottom finally fell out of it. So why should you be glad it happened and you spent time being miserable before one of you finally had the gumption to put it out of its misery? Better to just blot it out of your memory completely. You had enough sadness; it’s time to be glad… until the next “happy thing” that turns bad, makes you sad, and then has to be ended.

“Everything always works out in the end.”  Well, everything has some end, usually. And that end can be good or bad. If something “works out,” it implies that it is successful and, therefore, good. But the kinds of things that this simplistic saying usually addresses generally don’t work out, and the ending is bad. So, in fact, it does NOT work out. This is related to the idea that there are no mistakes and “everything happens the way it’s supposed to.” So, by this notion, we really have no free choice, to which I sneeze, “Ahbullshit”!

“There are plenty more fish in the sea.”  Another convenient way to excuse not taking stronger action to get the one you really wanted or to comfort yourself over having been naive enough to let the last fish swim away with your worm. Sure, there are many fish in the sea, and they all smell just about as bad as the one that got away.

“Better late than never.”  Better early or on time than late. This is just a convenient excuse for those who are punctuality-challenged. Get a better alarm clock.

And finally…

“Dance like no one is watching.”  The thing is that we are watching, and we are laughing our asses off (or being totally grossed out and on the verge of purge, depending on who is doing the dancing). But please, don’t stop entertaining us (unless you’re an obese twerker in WalMart spandex).

There are many, many others. But this is enough for now.
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