I Am Such A Sentimental Fool!

“Shelby, I visited your blog and it is obvious from the posts that I read that you are a talented, sensitive and creative person. Such personalities often suffer the most from the injustice that is part of the human experience. I really believe that if you undertook the journey to understand exactly what capitalism is and how it works that you would see the world in an entirely different way. While I understand the passion that produces the rants that you write (I was once in the same place that you are), please understand that those you rail against do not hear you. The only person who suffers is you, not them. One of the many wise observations in the many varieties of 12 step programs is this one: “We may think we can change the things around us according to our desires, but when a solution does come, we find it was our desires that had changed.”

I’m sure you know the Serenity Prayer:

God, grant me the serenity to accept the things that I cannot change
The courage to change the things that I can
And the wisdom to know the difference.

It is unlikely that you will be able to change capitalism but if you understand what it is and how it works, I promise you that your desires will have changed. Will you still see injustice? Absolutely. But your reaction to injustice will change, perhaps in a way that will enable you to take some small steps to ameliorate a few instances of it.”

To my faithful followers, it would seem that I owe you all an apology. You have been reading the blog of a lunatic. Apparently, from the above comment, I suffer for my personality being what it is and for the fact that I have yet to undertake a journey into the world of capitalism to fully understand how it works. I am so extremely sorry that I failed to take this journey because if I had, I would not have posted so many rants that you have read that are, apparently, quite meaningless. I am railing at people who do not hear me and so it would seem that when I see injustice, I just need to make myself aware that I don’t understand capitalism and how it works and therefore, I am sensitive as opposed to hardened and so this must change. I must become cold and hard and dangerous and unfeeling, unkind, insensitive and I must become an asshole; a barbaric, selfish, self-serving brute that thinks only of my desires and to hell with the suffering of innocent human beings. I must understand capitalism and that there is nothing that I can do but recite the Serenity Prayer and by doing so, my ‘reaction to injustice will change’.

I should not post poems, excuse me, RANTS, because it has been brought to my attention that my ranting is pointless; they serve no useful purpose. My rants are only causing me undue anguish and are accomplishing nothing. I am wasting my time because I am not Mother Teresa. I am not Gandhi. I am not Rosa Parks. I am not Oprah Winfrey. I am not Donald Trump. I am not Barack Obama and so I must remain silent because no one cares if I speak or not. There is no one taking heed of what I say. Who am I? I am no one of importance. I am of no consequence. And I have personality issues that can only be resolved if I acknowledge that I do indeed, have these issues and take myself to the nearest group meeting, announce my name and proceed to talk about my need to have my ranting heard. I need to talk about the fact that I am nobody and yet, I am trying to get my voice heard when there is no one listening at all. I am a lunatic because I am sensitive. This I must tell the group that will accept the nobody that I am into a group of nobodies and after we have finished going around the group, hearing from each and every nobody, understanding that we should not rail against those that do not hear us, we shall then stand and hold hands and recite the Serenity Prayer. We are not drunks. We are not overeaters. We are not drug addicts. We are sensitivity addicts and for that, we must be deprogrammed. We must be desensitized. We should understand the capitalist system and disregard the system’s impact on our fellow human beings because only then can we harden our hearts to the drone struck. Only then can we forget about the refugees in Syria and Iraq and Afghanistan. Only then can we forget about the homeless tent cities in America. Only then can we forget that we have a heart and that that heart was once filled with love, sensitivity, compassion, sympathy, kindness and warmth. We should forget all of these things because we can do nothing about them, so being sensitive to them is pointless and counterproductive and our ‘reaction to injustice will change’.

We are not what this world needs. The world has too many of us in it and so one less is desirable. One less is a goal to strive for. One less deep and feeling soul is a blessing for this world. And for having one, I do apologize to my readers. It was never my intent to show you the pain I feel when I read of atrocities. It was never my intent to bombard you with my thoughtless ranting poetry that just showed the ugly side of my sensitivity. For that, again, I most sincerely apologize. I must embrace hatred and callousness. I must stop ranting because no one is listening and I just seem crazy and for that I must see if there is a group that I can join and find a god to hear me recite the Serenity Prayer. If I find that there is no such group, then I will take it upon myself to start one. But alas, is this too considered another issue I have, this fact of my need to start a group for nobodies? Quite obviously, I can’t win. I can’t be heard. I can’t rant. I can’t care. I can’t. I just can’t because those that I rail against don’t hear me and they will never understand my sensitivity. Oh, what a world!

In closing, regardless of what people may say, no one and I do mean NO ONE is going to stop me from ranting and raving or even railing against those that don’t hear me. I don’t care how much understanding of ‘capitalism’ I supposedly need. More understanding of capitalism is not what is needed; at least not in my book. The problem is that so few of us concern ourselves with the plight of others because if we did, we would not so carelessly and so callously ignore the suffering of others. I know that capitalism has run amok, but when I see the face of a child that died for no reason, when I see the face of a child that is a refugee because of bombs dropped in their homeland that was paid for by my tax dollars, you are goddamn right, I am going to rant and rave regardless of whether it does any good or not. No, I guess I’m not making a difference because I am not well-known nor am I on primetime or famous for having wardrobe malfunctions. But even if I sit in a little corner of the net and rant and rave and rail all by my lonesome, it is my call to make. If I am too sensitive for my own sake, so be it, but I refuse to try and turn it off like it is a faucet. I refuse to become an automaton. Nor will I recite some useless Serenity Prayer to a non-existent ‘god’ that if it did exist, we should not have to rant and rave and rail against all of this shit that is taking place, worldwide, to begin with!

What a sentimental fool am I! And I fully intend to remain so!