Tragedy Is So Easy

This is another topic that's been on my brain for a bit now.

Tragedy is so easy. Don't get me wrong. Surviving tragedy is not easy. But we, as a society, have manufactured a different idea of what "tragedy" is.

I present to you the following phrase: "First world problems."

The coffee you ordered was too hot/not hot enough.
Your unofficial parking spot was taken by someone.
You're having a bad hair day.

I think one of the biggest problems with American culture recently has been our refusal to qualify things. I think part of this is a reaction to a small subset of people who are so focused on the semantics of something that it feels futile to qualify your thoughts. When people get shot down, they tend to not want to fly. When the emotion we're trying to describe is met with "I don't think that's what you really mean," then we stop trying to describe. We stop trying to separate out the big from the large. And there becomes an agreed upon understanding that certain words are going to stand for much, much more than they were meant for.

Interesting, awesome, cool, hot, great, good, wonderful, amazing... these are quickly becoming nonsense words. Their meaning is lost because they are overused. They begin to blend together into some amorphous mass. If our culture were a person, they'd be repeating these words until they lost all meaning.

Tragedy, in some respects, is like this. Tragedy is becoming a catch-all. Tragedy is not a catch-all. Tragedy is not simplistic. Emotions are not simplistic, but I digress.

Tragedy is easy to apply to ourselves and others because we use it so much. Tragedy is easy to relate to because it's begun to lose its meaning. Tragedy is becoming misery. And we all know how misery feels about company.

It's too easy to talk about our tragedies.

And it's tragically difficult to talk about our successes or to compliment others for theirs.

Part of the reason I'm embarking on this journey is to clear my head of some of these thoughts. And, hopefully, somewhere along the way, remind myself that it's not all tragic. And that it is okay to be happy and to tell others how great they are.

It's also okay to tell myself that I'm pretty baller.

So, with that last thought in mind:

Write a list of all the stuff you're good at.

Once you've done that, try writing a piece about how one of those items is your super power. Imagine a world in which its continued existence relies on that power.

Now go save the world.