Stop Making Yourself Unhappy, Unless It Involves Green Alien Women Doing Sexy Dances

“Bob, it won’t kill you.  But it will make you very sore.” – Real Men

I promise, I try to have a point on alternate weeks.

The difference between what reality actually is and the way that you think reality should be can make you crazy.  It’s not unusual – I think it’s the way we’re wired as humans.  We have a big brain, and we can imagine things.  I, for instance, can imagine a world in peace where people just leave me alone, taxes don’t exist, and Joseph Stalin and communism are as hated as Britney Spears and the IRS.

Yeah.  I can imagine it.  But I won’t hold my breath.  Some of the stuff the world throws at me makes me pretty mad, if I allow myself to sit and think about it.  You’ll notice I used the word “allow” – because that’s what it is – allowing myself to dwell on something that makes me mad.  Honestly, I’ll admit it:  sometimes I go online just to find a story that makes me angry, probably because it’s a substitute for a pacemaker that doesn’t require electricity.  So, yes, anger keeps my heart beating on alternate Wednesdays when I run low on coffee.

The sad part is that most anger is a wasted emotion.  Most of life just is.  Nothing you can do can change it.  On many things trying to change it is even worse than the original problem.  We started out with a Depression in 1930, but ended up with a World War.  See?  Not a real good trade.  Oh, wait, we got the space program out of it.

However, I’ll also tell you that you just can’t ignore everything in life and just say mañana, as attractive as that may sound at 5AM on a Monday morning.  So, you can’t care about everything, but you also can’t ignore everything.  It sounds like a paradox, like how the Kardashians became famous for being famous, but give me a second to explain.  I’m a trained professional.

For me, it comes down to having a list of criteria.

Does it matter?  In reality, most things really don’t matter one way or another.  If they’re out of strawberry topping for your hamburger, it doesn’t matter.  You might remember tomorrow, but you certainly won’t remember next week.  You won’t remember when you’re 80.  Rule of thumb?  If you won’t remember it next year, it isn’t important.

Does your action make a difference?  You may be a Flat-Earther© and believe that everyone on Earth should move away from the horribly illogical heliocentric model that has no evidence behind it.  No matter what actions they take, they won’t make a difference.  I mean, because they’re nuts.

Is it a matter of principle?  Not everything is.  Giordano Bruno (Jordan Brown in English) is a dead Italian who got burned at the stake due to heresy on February 17, 1600, at the age of 52-ish, so you know he pissed somebody with a cool hat off.  The funny thing is that if you go to the Wikipedia page on Bruno, it makes him look like Carl Sagan crossed with Barack Obama.  He questioned all Christian dogma (which makes him the darling of the Left) while arguing for an infinite Universe and used the Copernican model of our Solar System to predict that there would be planets around other stars.  Genius!

But Wikipedia skips gently around the fact that he didn’t like Christ – he liked Hermes, and was a fan of reintroducing Egyptian gods.  Today, he’s revered as a Gnostic saint.  And, really, if anyone starts the name of their sect with a silent “G”, do we really want give them any gcredence?  I thought gnot.

Even though Bruno picked a really stupid thing to die about, at least he had some pretty fierce words to say to people who thought they could tell him what to do:

It is immoral to hold an opinion in order to curry another’s favor; mercenary, servile, and against the dignity of human liberty to yield and submit; supremely stupid to believe as a matter of habit; irrational to decide according to the majority opinion, as if the number of sages exceeded the number of fools.

Jordan Brown, er, Giordano Bruno seems to think pretty highly of his own opinion.  But the sentiment is a good one.  One I’ll buy, unless it’s about running out of strawberry topping for my hamburger.  That’s probably not a hill I’m willing to die on.  Unless they were out of ketchup, too.

I bought Giordano’s book, Expulsion of the Triumphant Beast, and started to read it.  After I realized that it would take me two years of study of ancient Egyptian mythology, ancient Greek mythology, astrology, and 16^th Century European politics to decipher it, I decided to read a book where aliens wanted to drop a meteorite on Earth instead.  At least I understood that the aliens wanted to come to earth because they liked our women as much as we do.

No, not hot alien girls.  But, in a pinch that’ll do.

But Giordano has a point – there is a place where principle wins above all.  It may not be this hill we’re willing to die on, but we have to be willing to die on some hill, even if we can’t win.  If you’re not willing to die on that stupid hill where it’s a beautiful, pointless, stupid gesture?  You’re not fully human, and would probably sell me out for a pack of Juicy Fruit® gum.  For your sake, I hope you know where your hill is, or can find it.  Even (shudder) if it involves astrology.  Jesus, Bruno was an idiot.

The alternate view is that the future belongs to those that show up, so, pick that hill carefully.  Giordano picked his.  And he really did die on it.  I’m pretty sure he didn’t have kids, but he did show up for the future, in the most potent way possible:  with his ideas.  If I could go back in time I wouldn’t kill Stalin or Lenin.  Nope.  I’d kill Marx – he was a fat guy who never had a job and was probably smelly because he couldn’t properly clean out his bodily crevices in Victorian England, but his ideas . . . his ideas have killed millions.  But more about those tools on Monday.

By the way, finding a stupid name like Jordan Brown (sorry, dude) could sound so much like someone who commanded a tank division, I looked up John Wilder in Italian, and it would be Giovanni Feroce.  Which is really badass.  But it’s not Latin, which would probably sound something like Giovannius Maximus Feroci.  Yeah.  Like commander of a tank, designed by Ferrari® to fight grizzly bears.  I can deal with that.  Except Italians can’t seem to keep the oil on the inside of the engine.

The Boy put this together.  He does indicate that he works for Ramen®.  His favorite is beef, but he will do chicken.  Shrimp?  You’re not making any friends there.  Stick with land animals.

Here are the zones:

• Zone 1: This is the most important zone:  you can change it.  It matters.  It’s a matter of principle.  This, with no humor added, is the definition of the hill you can die on.

Yes, it’s a Microsoft® Office™ meme.  No, I’m not proud about it.

• Zone 2: You can change it.  The best definition of this is “It’s the principle of the thing.”  It’s not important.  This is the Zone inhabited by Karens.

And my real readers would never complain.

• Zone 3: It matters.  It’s a matter of principle.  But you can’t change it.  I think this is what Twitter® accounts are for?  Also?  Maybe sometimes this is a good hill to die on, too.
• Zone 4: It’s a matter of principle.  And it doesn’t matter.  And you can’t change it.  I think this is the MySpace© of issues.
• Zone 5: It matters, you can change it, but it’s not a matter of principle.  So, you know, get up and mow your lawn.  Or at least stay off mine.
• Zone 6: It matters, you can’t change it.  Ignore it.  Triggered people live here, and I know you don’t want to live like Trigglypuff.

I remember when the word “triggered” had nothing to do with people unable to contain emotions just because someone said something naughty.  But I also remember when dudes didn’t win girl’s high school track meets. 

• Zone 7: You can change it.  It’s not principle.  It doesn’t matter.    This sounds a lot like FaceBook®.  If you use it, keep in mind you’re keeping Zuckerberg in sippy cups while he sits on his high chair.

Thankfully Congress got him a sippy cup.

Inadvertently, I seem to have come up with actual advice that might help you if you’re sane enough to follow it.  Who knew?  Nah, who am I kidding?  Go nuts.  Literally.  It seems to work for AntiFa®.