✨ 🍵 Spilling Tea 🍵 ✨ How Not to Be a Miserable Bastard [In My Opinion] (Patreon)

• Don’t Feed the Miserable Bastard Inside of You:

All of us, everyone of us, has an inner, vile, miserable piece of shit bastard that likes to think miserable piece of shit bastard thoughts. He’s never happy, he’s always the victim, and nothing, not anything is ever his fault. He’s gross and the more we feed him, the stronger, and more entitled he feels to share his misery with others. Don’t feed the miserable bastard inside of you.

• Don’t Blame Others For Your Life (Assign Some Responsibility and Move On):

I am not a very intense person. I do not have firm ideologies, extreme opinions about what people should do in their bedrooms, or a desire to have people think like me. I could be just as wrong as any other desperate fuck trying to make sense out of life. However, I am a firm believer in “we all go through shit”. We all have terrible things done to us, happen to us, forced on us. You can come from a privileged background, have a sheltered childhood and still get royally fucked over in life. Bad shit happens to everyone, not just him, not just her, everyone.

There is a natural tendency for us all to tally our misfortunes against our peers, family, and loved ones. And whilst it can be productive to take stock and feel grateful for what we have, it’s very important not to treat misery as a competition. Nobody should want to win “I had it the worst”. It’s not a win.

And do people fuck us over? Absolutely! Nobody gets to choose their start in life, and for so many of us, it’s such an unfair beginning. Being born into abuse, neglect, poverty, drug addiction, etc, is not how anyone’s story should start. But it does, for so many of us, and it is nothing but unfair.

And could, would, does that breed a sense of hate and animosity for the one’s who failed us? Absolutely. Unfortunately, the people who fuck us over, whether it be in childhood or adulthood, rarely give much of a shit. Shitty people aren’t shitty people because they make mistakes, shitty people are shitty people because they don’t care they’re shitty. Abusers, toxic parents, serially unfaithful partners rarely give much of a shit about anyone but themselves, and so are very rarely interested in taking any kind of responsibility, especially if that involves owning up to their mistakes.

The frustration that comes with knowing you were fucked over and you’re never gonna see justice, can be cancerous. And I think that’s the thing to remember. What’s done is done, it shouldn’t have happened, and the person that fucked you over is never going to say “I’m sorry. That shouldn’t have happened. I was so wrong. And you are right to hate me”. I believe, we cannot spend our lives waiting for people to apologise, own-up, or make it better. Even if they wanted to, they probably couldn’t make it better anyway. Even we can’t make it better. We can’t justify it, explain it away or wrap a pretty bow around it and call it “a different time”. We can’t make it better, but with time, work, and being open to others, we can make us better.

Hold them accountable for what they did, know their role, and leave them behind. Do not let the people who fucked you over determine the rest of your life. They are not your life, you are your life and you have a say in what happens next.

• Be the Good:

I know a lot of people might be feeling the urge to punch me with this one, and trust me, I’ve been there. “Oh, fuck off. I don’t want to be the good. I want the good. I’ve had enough shit happen to me. Just let me have some good.”

And… yeah. Just yeah. I feel that. I get that. I’ve been that.

Unfortunately, all of us have a turn at that.

As I said, we all go through shit - our parents are awful, people hurt us, disappoint us or just flat out don’t care whether we live or die - shit happens and it sucks.

So, if everyone has shit happen to them, what’s the point?

Well, get ready for the cringe, because it’s coming - there is no point, not unless we make one. And to me, there is enough emphasis on how shit and fucked and evil the world is. From the news to social media to your work place staff room, we cannot escape “did you hear about?”.

Yes. Yes, we did and it’s depressing as shit. Bombings, human shields, child slavery, incels shooting their mothers, Amazon employees being run into an early grave. It’s all fucked and it’s all consuming. And for the most part, there’s very little we can do to change it.

So, this is why people knit cute dog sweaters, bake cookies, cycle to their friend’s house, send care packages to refugees, clean their mother’s house, buy their sister flowers, check-in on their brother, because that’s something we can do. We have so little control over the big things. Most of us are not celebrities, politicians, world leaders - most of us are small people with a small sphere of influence. And it’s in that little sphere that we can be the good.

We can’t take away the bad, but we can create some good. Will cleaning your house or walking your dog or making something for your friend alter the world for the better? Probably not, but that doesn’t mean it’s not worth doing. To quote a most beloved meme: “imagine being a nihilist, knowing life is pointless and still choosing to be miserable. Lol.”

If everything is meaningless, I’m going to bake cookies and try to cultivate as much good as I possibly can. And yes, that is easier said than done, but that is the very essence of talking about something versus actually doing it. It’s not easy, it’s the exact opposite of easy, but it is worth doing. Dig deep, go forward and do purposefully kind things. It feels better than sitting in despair.

• Take the Happiness of Others Seriously:

In my humbug humble opinion, the root of the miserable bastard lies in one thing and one thing only - self-centredness. Now, as people we cannot help but see the world through our own eyes. Our biological programming runs on the desire for our own comfort, safety, security and happiness. We cannot help but think about how things affect us first. And for the most part, that isn’t even a bad thing. It’s survival and self-preservation and the reason we’ve lasted approximately 300,000 years as a species.

HOWEVER, I like to believe that we, as modern, complicated, socially-conscious people, are more than our biology. It’s the very reason that most of us don’t hit people we hate over the head with a rock, or kidnap and rape people we’d like to fuck. We are more than our baseness. We are more than our selfishness. We are capable of caring about the safety and welfare of others, even at the inconvenience of ourselves.

We can because we should, because, deep down, it feels really good. Not always, not every time, but knowing that you have the ability to care for and about other people is a remarkably comforting piece of information. Think about it: even when shit hits the fan, even when you’re tired and overworked and just generally pissed-off at the world, you still have the capacity to worry about someone else, to hope for someone else, to put another person’s immediate happiness before your own. Why? Because you are more than the miserable piece of shit bastard.

Egocentrism (the inability to see things from other people’s perspective) usually lasts from about two to six or seven years old. Talk to most toddlers and you’ll experience a certain level of “good god, if you were an adult, you’d be a monster”. Because that’s just it - children need egocentrism in order to develop, communicate their needs, and well, survive, but if you met an adult who threw themselves on the floor every time they didn’t get what they wanted, you’d run a mile and keep running.

Becoming an adult is fundamentally learning how to take punches, rejections, bad luck and still keep going. To have shitty things happen to you, done to you, and still choose to aspire to decency. And a huge part of that is knowing that you’re not the only one in pain.

Other people are not accessories to our lives. Other people are complicated, multifaceted, flawed individuals with hopes and dreams and worries that go so far beyond our influence in their lives. Parents aren’t just care givers, love interests aren’t just cute men and women, friends aren’t just venting posts - we are all messy, clumsy, overwhelmed individuals and we all need a lot of support.

So, if that’s the case, and we all want love and support and for someone to give a shit, why don’t we do just that? Like, seriously. Why don’t we get our mom flowers, bake our friends some brownies, text our dad at work… why don’t we? People can present as high-functioning, completely capable, go-getters, and be an absolute mess on the inside.

The truth of the matter is, we don’t know what people are going through. All we can guess is that it’s probably more than they’re showing. Just like us. So, let’s just care. Let’s put time and energy and thought into the lives of the ones we care about. Let’s stop believing that we’re incapable of making a positive difference, because that is absolute horse shit. Everyone can do good, regardless of circumstance, ableism, race, finances, etc. Kindness is just a choice to care about others. Whether it’s a gift, a favor, an act of service, positive affirmations, we can all afford to be kind.

• Above All Else, Try:

Lastly, and with the most conviction, even when you don’t want to… just try. We have such a small, finite time to be alive and make choices and fall in love and eat bread and make someone laugh. It is here and gone before you even realise. Life is short and fragile and it deserves to be lived as well as it can be. And I can’t help but believe that one of the best ways to live is to make the conscious choice not to be a miserable bastard.

As always, I really appreciate that life isn't one size fits all. These are just my thoughts, I hope they can be of some use to you.

All the best,

Tea