I Hate People

Song of the Day: “Beautiful People” by Marilyn Manson

“The weak ones are there to justify the strong

The beautiful people, the beautiful people

It’s all relative to the size of your steeple

You can’t see the forest for the trees

And you can’t smell your own shit on your knees”

For some reason I have been on a Manson music binge for the past few days. “Beautiful People” is just one of Manson’s many great songs. I understand why people would be opposed to letting Marilyn Manson have free reign in the media. He’s a freaky guy. He wears way too much makeup for any one man to be wearing, he wears strange outfits that make him look like a woman, or some bizarre space creature, or a Nazi. That would, and does, disturb a lot of people. It doesn’t bother me though. I don’t care what he looks like, I don’t care what he says on the news. He makes good music, and that’s it. Some of his lyrics might be a bit out there (“Tourniquet” anybody?) but for me it’s hardly about the lyrics. I listen to the entire song, not just the guitars or the drums or the lyrics. It’s a melding of all the elements in the band that creates the complete picture. It wouldn’t be the same song without the guitar track, would it?

As it turns out, Manson is a very intelligent man. If you’ve ever seen him on any talk show, you would know what I’m talking about. Sure he looks like a freak, but that’s all part of the persona that he has knowingly and willingly adopted. He is trying to create a shock value in his image that gets him noticed. If he gets noticed in the media, or there is some big controversy because of him, he sells more records. So all he has to do is create this anti-christ image of himself that everyone loves to hate. Politicians, WASP house moms and bible huggers do all the marketing work for him every time they get on the news whining about Manson turning America’s children into Satan worshipers. Simple, right?

Anyway, enough about Manson. He makes great music but there are a lot of other talented artists out there, so lets move on.

Thanksgiving was a good break for me. I got to see the majority of my family in Maryland. Needless to say between myself, my dad, and my uncle, there was plenty of great wine flowing constantly. Thanksgiving dinner is one of the most memorable events of the year, if not solely for the left-over turkey sandwiches and stuffing (I am a stuffing-aholic). After the events on Thursday, I drove home Friday night to go out drinking with some of my fraternity brothers in Long Beach. And boy did we go out. We got hammered and it was an absolute blast. When I woke up in the morning I had the shakes so bad I couldn’t drive my car, so I had to wait that out at my friend’s apartment. Fortunately another one of my brothers called me and we went out to lunch, which was a great opportunity to recover. I was still so hung over though that I left my phone charger at his place, so sorry to anyone who’s tried to get in touch with me since the weekend, I have been sans phone.

Saturday night my dad opened a bottle of 1982 bordeaux (care to clarify on which bottle Dad?) which was fantastic. I think that wine is in its prime right now and is perfect for drinking over christmas break (hint, hint). After that I went to see my friends who I have not had a chance to hang out with in a very long time. Only one of them was home, so we hung out, played video games and drank some beer. After a while something personal came up with him and I came back home. I spent the rest of the night drinking three bottles of wine with my neighbor Taylor, who has been a very good friend to my family for quite some time.

All in all, I would say it was a pretty successful Thanksgiving break. But for some reason, I feel stressed out all over again. I haven’t gone to the gym once since I’ve been back, which is a long time for me. I think it’s just that finals and due dates for my final projects are bearing down on me and the pressure is just climbing every day. Which gets me to the title of my post. I hate people. I just seethe and boil over the most inconsequential things about a specific person and I hate them for it.

This is what happens sometimes when I get stressed out. I channel all of that pent-up energy into anger which I direct at random people for no reason. One time when I was boarding a plane, I saw a woman and I immediately wanted to punch her in the face simply because I didn’t like the way she looked. There’s not much rhyme or reason to it, I just pick somebody and blow everything out of proportion. In these instances pretty much everything pisses me off and there’s nothing I can do about it, I just have to sit and fume and wait for it to pass. A voicemail that is longer than necessary, a pointless email or text message, somebody walking down the street talking about something entirely inane. All of these things and much, much more just make me so God damned angry. Which is uncharacteristic of me because I try to never be angry, just mellow.

I went through a stage in my life when I was angry all the time. Angry, or morbidly depressed, I’m not sure which one. I listened only to heavy metal and death metal, wore the t-shirts, had long hair, the works. That was a very difficult time in my life and I try to avoid living my life in any way that is seriously tied to that time. Sure, I still listen to heavy metal and, obviously, I listen to bands like Marilyn Manson. But I also listen to every other genre of music. I wear clothes that are bright and expressive; my favorite color is orange, but it’s tough to wear that a lot, it’s more of an accent color. So now I try to live a mellow life. Nothing really makes me angry any more except a small group of very particular things and during times like these. I do get frustrated very easily, but when I do get frustrated I always try to put whatever I’m doing down and come back to it later so I can cool off. I try to divest myself of attachments from certain things so that I can’t get upset over things that don’t matter. It amazes me how some people can get so worked up over the most mundane thing. Or some people get stressed out by things they can’t control. What’s the point? There’s nothing you can do about it, so just deal with it and move on. There’s no point wasting energy worrying about the situation when you should be directing your energy towards trying to figure out how you’re going to make the best of it.

If you worry about every little thing that happens in your life, you’ll end up dead, or even worse, old, before you know it. You have to care about the important things, the things that really matter. You have to stop, take stock of your life, and determine what is important to you. What do you like about your life? What do you hate? What would you change and what can’t you change? All of these are important questions, things you need to figure out on your own. I know that isn’t the easiest thing to do. Hell sometimes I can’t even do it. But it’s something we all need to do so that we can figure out what’s important and what’s not. So we can care about what really matters, and divest ourselves of burdens we shouldn’t be carrying.

For those of you reading this, I hope that you take me seriously. I hope that you take a little time for yourself to reflect on the events of the day or the week or whatever. Think about what happened and how you reacted. Think about how the situation would have changed if you had reacted a different way. People in general are quick to anger for various reasons to long to list here. In my experience interacting with other people, most of the time people react negatively in a situation that doesn’t even matter. It bothers me when I see my friends go through this because I can so easily shrug my shoulders and move on, because the situation doesn’t affect me, so therefore I don’t care. But most people don’t react that way. So next time you are in a difficult situation take a step back and evaluate the situation entirely, and try to determine if it really matters to you one way or the other. And please, take the time to reflect on the events of your day and how you reacted to to them, and try to learn from your mistakes. This could be a good step towards living with a little less stress in your life. I hope you do this, even for 15 minutes a day, it is worth doing.