Forget your flaws! Forget the haters! Do what you like! Do what you feel! Don’t just be a customer; be a happy, delighted, determined, excited, enthusiastic, pleased, proud, peaceful, obedient, and satisfied customer! Why? Because you’re perfect just the way you are!

Yeah, except that I’m not.

This is what they tell me today, when I open up the internet, when I look at the TV, when I listen to the radio, or when I read the titles of the magazines in the rack of gossip and ruination near the checkout counters.

Now when we read the above phrases, we tend to think that the person receiving them is a victim of society—unjustly judged and covertly manipulated by the Big Bad System. But if we shift our perspective to say… someone who has no job, vegetates on the couch, and has a permanent facial expression that resembles someone who just gave birth, the story changes.

In a world of malfunction, obesity and the flat-broke disease, we have turned old school concepts that used to make us better people to new age prescription fixes that temporarily gets us by. For instance, criticism is now synonymous to “judging” people, rather than something you just simply disagree with; motivation is now reduced to a feel-good pep talk, rather than a practice of patience and perseverance; and political correctness is now akin to kindness, rather than institutional censorship.

Of course, I’m not advocating for bigots who never get laid. I’m just simply railing against abuse, but at the other end of the spectrum.

It’s like when people say, it’s the thought that counts, which negates the fact that the thought is different from the deed. After all, I’m sure we can all agree that if someone told us, “Hey I meant to call you on your birthday; I just never got to it. But it’s the thought that counts,” that such a statement deserves a response somewhere in the vicinity of, Eat shit and die, motherfucker!

Today, it seems to me that everybody just looks to be inspired but nobody wants to truly aspire. Everybody just wants to go public with their opinions, but nobody really wants to receive any public opinion. Everybody is just addicted to the feeling of being happy, but nobody is genuinely working towards actually being happy.

It’s funny because the stories that stick with us the most are all marred with struggles and despair; and yet, in our own lives, we want to steal into another existence, to escape into an invented, heavenly world where the measure and value of challenges are erased.

To me this preoccupation to feeling happy, this addiction to feeling good all the time, is nothing more than an emotional substance abuse—a pursuit of self-forgetting and selective acceptance. It’s impossible to pick and choose what emotions to feel because anger, sadness, envy, and even self-hate are all necessary in your development as a complete human being.

I mean, that’s how you get over a break up, right? The sonofabitch dumped you, erased you from their life, and replaced you with someone better just as quick. Are you just gonna try and feel ok about it? Hell no! You’re gonna be angry. You’re gonna be jealous. Shit, you might even dig holes in the desert and plan vacations so you could be “somewhere else.”

The point is, it’s not bad starting with sadness or anger; the problem is ending with them. The goal is to improve upon what you can change and surpass your past mistakes. I mean, you can’t be happy all the time. If you’re happy all the time then you’re either on medication, on parole, or you haven’t been caught yet.

Pandering to good feelings alone produces half-born thoughts and half-aborted convictions. It does nothing for you, or the people around you, because what you’re really saying is something you don’t really want heard.

Therefore I say quit being a victim. Let it be known that you have no obligation to peace, zen healing or aromatherapy. Allow yourself to doubt, anger and despise because behind your thoughts and feelings is you—the real unapproved, uncertified, unregulated you.

In today’s world, your bravery is a much more needed commodity than your sympathy. Because when the going get’s tough, the tough shows everybody how it’s done.

So stand up, show your scars, and aim for the heart!