Great

I want to make a great speech. I want it to be moving and funny; inspiring but not preachy; and clever but still solemn. I want it to hit home. I want to convey so many things; I want to talk about struggle and triumph, life and love, and home and family. 

But all I can think of tonight is how I hate this oddly growing subculture that is developing all around me. I think we have become a generation of complainers. We glamorize pain and anger to the point where all we do is complain. We thrive on the attention; on the sympathy it brings. 

It is pathetic. Pathetic and stupid. Being happy is not due to circumstance; it is a conscious decision a person should make on a regular basis. 

There are times in our lives that will require great sadness and anger. A death of a loved one, a loss of a great human figure, a life-altering injury. But those things are, thankfully, very few and far between. We cast a shadow on the days that we have to be happy with passionate complaints over a mistaken drink order, a careless driver, or a trivial argument with a family member. We are choosing to miss out on the best days of our lives. We are choosing to ignore all we have because we would rather be angry or sad. We would rather the satisfying attention and sympathy gained from an idle complaint than to to truly enjoy the days we have here on this Earth.

We are wasting our lives. We are not so much letting each moment that could hold so much joy pass us by as we are forcing any joy we might feel out of hearts in order to find that one, small, faint shadow of a complaint that we can grab hold of and allow it to carry up through our day. A dreary, gloomy cloud we choose to be, because that is what will bring us the most attention.

Pathetic. Sad and unbelievably stupid. 

What great fools we have become.

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