It Could Be Better

There’s a tendency by perpetual optimists to couch everything in terms of hope and positivity. Good things and happy thoughts. The sweet stuff. This gives most events a nice veneer of respectability and acceptance, making it seem unseemly to complain about anything in polite company. I consider this method dishonest since it uses trickery to repress a natural human emotion. We have entire industries based around complaints, dubbing them departments, yet after a couple glasses of wine people shouldn’t whine. How is that fair? 

Complaining is what most people do best, especially around the holidays. To some, the holidays are about togetherness and thankfulness, but I don’t see that possible when so many could have so much more. The way it’s often positioned is that if you look at the whole of human history and pluck out our pleasant temporal nugget, this is inarguably the best time to be alive. You don’t have to worry about being eaten by roaming beasts or beaten by Roman legions. You have a decent Internet connection, a microwave, and a fridge full of solid food (alongside a couple liquids too). Your closet isn’t empty and neither is your bank account. But you can’t help but think things could be just a little bit better.

You’re not a billionaire. You’re not a young, capricious king, looking to expand territory. You haven’t paraglided today. And your newest child’s stroller doesn’t hover a few millimeters off the ground. 

Therein lies the first of many reasons to complain about your situation. You want to be thankful for what you have, or, as the song goes, what you got, but how can you be?  

So this Thanksgiving, don’t be thankful, be determined to get more out of life. This new direction starts with your dinner plate. If you dominate the side dishes and win the Risk like struggle for dining supremacy, 2022 might just be a great one. Right now you ought to be strategizing how to best secure the most helpings. This isn’t dinner at a Chinese restaurant where sharing is the norm. The point is to pile each dish high and by the time your relatives approach the buffet, the pickings are slim and cold. You’ll have them thinking how to optimize their food selections during future holidays. 

Happy heaping.