I am what time, circumstance, history, have made of me, certainly, but I am also, much more than that. So are we all. James A. Baldwin

Everyone is miserable.

No, that's wrong and far too obvious, the world is on the brink of collapse, of course everyone is miserable.

I should say misery loves company...yeah, let's stick with that.

Growing pain revelation #2943982034:

I've come to notice (of course, being on Twitter, because what else am I good for these days) that there are some truly hateful people out there in this world. And not the obvious, -ism/ist/-phobic kind of hateful people, I mean like just plain old miserable haterators. Squadrons of people who lavishly feed off of the pain of others on some real schadenfreude sh*t.

And it doesn't even have to be people they know personally or hold any ill will towards - hell, sometimes the people pointing and laughing themselves are not inherently bad, they're just people delighting in the misery of others because they too are miserable.

I cannot say I am appalled, beings have always been like this. The constant variance of the Alpha/Beta/Omega human as a result of/response to social context has ensured that there will always be those who laugh and those who get laughed at.

To liken social media to a digital watering hole, I just can't help but notice that there are far too many who, like vultures, smell the decomposition of the living spirit and are quick to swallow it up whole - feasting for the moment before flocking off to the next.

Can't even deny, I used to be one of those people laughing at the expense of others, and honestly speaking, and sometimes - at the fault of reflex- I still do.

But the older you get, the more self-aware you become. At least, such is the case for me.

I've just gotten old and grown tired of it - I've gone all soft and sympathetic.

In detaching myself from a lot of people and things, I've grown more cognizant of just what I don't want around me and what I don't want following me.

Also, I'm from the DMV where joaning is a national sport and if you didn't have a silver tongue or an established clique by the age of 10, living in the shadows was your best bet at a stress-free life.

(Somewhere in here is a rant about mob mentality, but really who even has the time to get into that cesspool)

But I'm not a child anymore, delighting in the misfortunes of others is no longer exciting or appealing because:

1. I'm grown, and
2. We are literally ALL going through it.

In 2018 I am making active effort to not engage in the enjoyment or hyper focus of other people's misery. And by other people, I mean inherently innocent, unassuming people.

If you are Donasaurus T. Rump, one of his supporters, a hateful, deviant spirit, minion of Beelzebub etc. I will actively drink your tears while shrieking like Gollum.

I just want to be better than 15-year-old me, you know?

Sometimes it's crazy seeing just how some people refuse to move past that spot, but again, misery loves company and the company loves the misery.

Despite behavior often being thought to be an evolutionary, adaptive trait, not everybody wishes to evolve, rather they just age.

I just want to be better.

“For, after all, you do grow up, you do outgrow your ideals, which turn to dust and ashes, which are shattered into fragments; and if you have no other life, you just have to build one up out of these fragments. And all the time your soul is craving and longing for something else. And in vain does the dreamer rummage about in his old dreams, raking them over as though they were a heap of cinders, looking in these cinders for some spark, however tiny, to fan it into a flame so as to warm his chilled blood by it and revive in it all that he held so dear before, all that touched his heart, that made his blood course through his veins, that drew tears from his eyes, and that so splendidly deceived him!”
― Fyodor Dostoyevsky, White Nights and Other Stories