Cheer the Fxxx Up. A guide.

In his infinite wisdom, my esteemed editor in chief forwarded me a few links this morning to see if I could make heads or tails of them. My options were the prospects of pimping one’s self from the comfort of one’s own home via the interwebs, and how undergrads aren’t learning anything while they’re undergrads. This is, in a word, terrible.  

Then, what caught my eye was this dreary little chestnut: Has Anyone Ever Been Happy In a Duane Reade? My mission became clear.  

Cheer the Fuck Up, New York. Do it now. Yes. Times are tough. Boo hoo.  My heart bleeds for you (it’s here, on my sleeve). Things are tough all over. And for the record, I write this not from an ivory tower but from a cubicle, wearing pajamas under my pants because I can’t afford long johns.   

I have every confidence that even if things were comin’ up roses, you’d still find a reason to be unhappy. So let’s look at that.  Right fuckin’ now.  

There’s this nigh-instinctive drive we have to make ourselves miserable. (God forbid we suffer the indignity of fleeting contentment.) I don’t know why we do it, but I do know how we do it: we measure all the things we don’t have. My point? How much you have has absolutely fuck-all to do with your happiness.  

But we measure anyway, and come up wanting, and use this great old excuse to feel miserable, and drink, or do things we’ll regret later, and justify them all the way down because we think “I want to feel better right now and this may work. And even if it doesn’t, it’ll take my mind off things for a while.”  

Here’s where things get tricky. Because some of you are bound to be a bit pissed off by now, while some others may actually be thinking, “Shit, this guy’s got a point.” Stick with me, cause this is going someplace beautiful.  

If you need a reason to be cheerful, I’ll give you plenty: You have a roof over your head. You can safely travel 100 miles in ease and comfort, and not die from an infected tooth. The food you eat tonight has been grown, inspected, packaged and delivered to easy-to-reach stores for your convenience.