don’t be a jerk

What is “bitter”? I’ve been there, still go there at times, and I know people whom I feel are in the same boat.I’ve had some conversations in the past few days about this, and I’ve really been working it through my head. I even wrote a lengthy, several-page entry about it, which I thankfully did not publish and opted, instead, to abridge it to these few points:

1.) People who are bitter feel that they are owed something. They feel that they have somehow been wronged, slighted, or shortchanged and, if there is any justice or karma, they are due an entitlement.

2.) Feeling bitter is an un-focused, almost passive emotion. It is not active, like, say anger. Anger can be directed towards a person, or something else that is not abstract. You can be angry at a person; however, you can only feel bitter about something, usually something abstract.

Say you have a contemporary that is your equal in every way, except for the fact that he or she is far more successful than you are, and that makes you crusty. The truth is: you are not bitter at that person. You are bitter about the fact that you yourself are not as successful as you wish you were, and that person is simply a reminder of that.

Bitterness lies solely within a person. It is painfully singular. It has no natural release because there is no concrete focus for it. Because of this, it never leaves on it’s own. It festers and builds up.

I’ve been thinking about this so much in the past few days because this idea scares me. I don’t think much about being, say, angry at people. Some people deserve it. Who cares? Fuck ‘em.

But being bitter - I don’t want to be bitter. Many other people, like myself, want so much out of life, oftentimes more than we currently have. And a lot of times, what keeps us going, and, eventually, succeeding, is this little notion that we deserve more. We deserve success. Or hot members of the opposite sex. Or more donuts. Whatever.

There is nothing wrong, I’ve decided, in believing that you deserve better. When you deserve something, you want it. You will work until you get it. You will do whatever it takes to get it, and when you do get it, you will relish it and possess it with absolute assured comfort because you earned it and because it was yours all along.

But when you feel that you are owed something, you are instead bitter that you do not currently have it. You don’t work for it because you feel that it should be given to you. You don’t adjust, or change, or adapt because to do so would be a concession that you should not have to give.

Sometimes I meet older people that are like this, and sometimes, after only a few minutes of conversation, I can tell that they’ve been this way for quite some time - maybe even since they were young.

Okay [thought process finished}:
I deserve success.
Nobody owes me a damn thing.
I have everything that I am supposed to have at this point in time.

On to a complete non-sequitur: UCLA is in the final four. Fuggin amazing. However it is a bit discouraging that we fought our way into the finals by valiantly sucking less than Memphis did. Still, I’m looking forward to this Saturday.

So I did end up ordering that bed today. It comes in on Tuesday. “Wheeee!” (to be said in a girlish falsetto).