Greg Tannen of McSweeney’s wrote a short, amusing, insightful piece from the perspective of The Void, pleading for people to stop screaming into it and do something instead.
I loved it so much. Stop reading me and go read it.
I’m in complete agreement with Tannen. Regardless of your current misery, screaming into the void, complaining endlessly, wallowing in self-pity, declaring it to be end times, and the like, is not helpful to yourself and the people around you.
Be upset. Be outraged. Be angry, frustrated, sad, and incensed. But as Tannen’s Void suggests:
“Be proactive about your life. Go do something about it.”
As someone who often expresses this idea, I suspect that Tannen is receiving two distinct responses to this piece:
- Thank you.
- I will scream into any void I want, sir. These are end times, damn it. Shut up!
Ignoring the latter is usually advisable.
Ignoring is often the best response because it costs you nothing and lets you keep having fun while your critic waits for a response and wonders if you even read their criticism.
But when I get my hackles up and decide that a response is needed, I like to remind these doomsayers that unless they are:
- Enslaved on a Georgia plantation
- Fighting on the beaches of Iwo Jima
- Standing in endless soup lines alongside their hungry children during the Great Depression
- Taking mortar rounds in the jungles of Vietnam
- Watching their neighbor get lynched in the Jim Crow South
- Unable to legally divorce their abusive husband
- Being bled by doctors who think the cure to their gout is removing a liter of their own blood
… these times might seem pretty honky-dory to many former Americans.
These times ain’t easy.
These times are not good.
But compared to many, they are miraculous, even with their atrocities.
Screaming into the void won’t help. Or maybe only screaming into the Void won’t help.
Try to make your day better, and maybe someone else’s, too.
The Void is right. “Be proactive about your life. Go do something about it.”
