Originally Posted by cheezemziez
(Post 419228)
Well, this is not a vent because I am feeling absolutely fine emotionally, but it's a kind of observation again, but this one could quite possibly be upsetting. I guess I'll put it in white in case anyone doesn't want to read it. I am so going to regret posting this. I don't mean to offend or disrespect anyone.
It kind of seems like society is trying to make us unhappy and misfortunate. There's this idea that richer, luckier, happier people are not as good people as the poor, unhappy and unlucky.
In primary school, my headteacher gave an assemblies about praying, and the Bible, and God. She told us a story about two men who were praying in the same church. One man was very fortunate. He was wealthy, and had a loving family, and he was thanking God for his kindness and generosity. The second man was an ex-criminal of some kind, and he was apologising to God, and praying for forgiveness and asking for a better life. Our headteacher told us that God favoured the second man over the first, despite telling us less than a week ago that God loved everyone equally. But I digress. She told us that God preferred him because he was unhappy, but still prayed.
People using guilt trips heavily imply that less fortunate people are better and more morally right. While this is often true, because of the emotional and physical strength and endurance needed to go through the suffering, they are not better people because they are less fortunate. People react to situations differently. There are people who would be amazing and strong through hard times, and there are people who would get angry and hateful and horrible if presented with the exact same situation. In the same way, lucky people can be positive and help others, or mock the less fortunate and abuse their supposed superiority.
When people die, especially in tragic circumstances such as random murders and suicide, everyone is suddenly praising them, and saying that they were wonderful, and the best. Even the kids who were bullied by everyone, and thought of as useless and stupid, thus forcing them into taking their own lives, are remembered by the very people who abused them as brilliant and whatnot. Why couldn't you have told them that when it could have saved them? Maybe because they feel guilty for being alive, maybe they feel sorry for the one who died, maybe they're showing respect to the dead, or maybe they do actually think that in dying, the deceased has risen above and beyond the living, that they are automatically better than everyone else. It's almost as if they think that dying in tragedy makes you a better person.
But it doesn't. You are still the same person as you were when you were alive. So to everyone reading this: You are wonderful, brilliant, intelligent, amazing, and so many other things, and you don't need to suffer for people to think that. No-one who is sentient is faultless. But no-one deserves suffering, and feeling sorry for them won't help them either.
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