A Pessimists View Some Annoying Cliches That Are Meant To Be Encouraging

    Recently, I was told by a friend that I can do anything if I believe in myself. I immediately felt the need to explain why that is complete BS. 

   "A schizophrenic with delusions of grandeur may believe with all his heart that he is Jesus and he can walk from one building to another on the air, but he will be no less dead than the depressed man who walked off the same building who believed with all his heart that there was nothing left for him in this world." - Me

                                                                                        image: www2.macleans.ca

I cannot recommend an attempt to walk between buildings on thin air, but if you do, please have someone record it. 

    You see? Instead of even making an effort to try and take the phrase for what it is - a somewhat silly but heartfelt attempt to lighten my spirits - I felt the need to deconstruct it. I did the same thing in my article about why the story of Beauty and the Beast isn't quite as beautiful as it's made out to be, and I do it pretty much constantly in my real life as well.

    Am I poorly adjusted to social interaction with normal people? Am I simply to much of a pessimist to ever enjoy the little things in life, doomed to be constantly judging and evaluating things at face value?

Probably.

But that kind of outlook makes for good satire, which is what I hope to deliver with this article. 

Behold! 

Obnoxious Cliches Overanalyzed With A Vengeance

    "Well, at least you have your health!"

    
    You're kind scraping the bottom of the barrel there, aren't you, buddy? You have no job, your family wants nothing to do with you, your dog was hit by a truck, your girlfriend left you, and to top it off, you just found out there's a movie that was rented by that same girlfriend using your credit card that is 7  months overdue, and you don't even have enough money to feed yourself, let alone pay off your debt to the Blockbuster down the street.

    I know the purpose of this phrase is to try and get somebody to look on the brighter side of life. What it's trying to say is, "Hey, things may look bad, but they could be much worse."

    What it usually sounds like to me is, "Hey, things are awful right now, but they will almost certainly get much worse. You know, because 70% of people will develop cancer in their lifetime, and you could always fall and break something, or get pinkeye or salmonela or the flu or any one of the hundreds of thousands of things that you are at risk of at any given moment. The human body is an incredibly complex and frail system of even smaller and more frail systems, any of which could suddenly decide to fail right now and throw your life into a cycle of pain and difficulty. But, you know, it's not nothing is wrong yet."

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At least your not on fire. Remember that. Always remember that.

    A better phrase would be...
    "You only have your health until Mother Nature wants it back."

    "Pain is just weakness leaving the body."
    
    Thank you, Marine recruitment geniuses. Thanks to your stellar catch phrase, I have to listen to jocks and meatheads saying that every time I want to quit something I find physically exhausting.

    Do you know what pain really is? Pain is your bodies way of telling you that whatever you're doing, it's very very bad and you need to stop right now. Pain is neurons firing when something harmful happens to your body. According to Marine logic, next time you see a toddler about to touch a hot stove, you should tell them, "Go ahead. Place your hand on the burner. It'll make you hand stronger."

                                             Image: blog.peakadoodle.com

"Come on, you baby. You gotta want it! Push yourself to the extreme. You can do it!"

    I have the same problem with adrenaline junkies. Your body releases adrenaline when it is in danger. It helps you move faster, lift stronger, and think quicker. It keeps your heart rate up so that you can survive. I don't want to train my body to think that dangerous situations are enjoyable. Because their not. Adrenaline accompanies fear for a good reason. BECAUSE FEAR ALWAYS SIGNALS DANGER.

    Or at least it should. That's why I don't watch scary movies either. Not being easily scared is nothing to be proud of. It just means that you have worse situational awareness. Fear is our brains way of telling us that something is wrong, and you need to prepare to flee or fight.

    So no thank you, Marines. I'd rather live pain and fear free. It means I'm safe. And should the situation arise where I feel pain and fear, I'll be ready for it, because I haven't dulled my senses to those experiences.

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Or maybe I'm just a pansy trying to justify his fear. I guess we'll never know.

    A better phrase would be...
    "Pain is just weakness leaving the body. Sometimes the spirit tags along with it."

    
    "Don't let anyone tell you that you can't do it." 
 
    What if they tell me that anyway? Should I beat 'em up? How do I stop them from saying that? How do I know if they're about to say that?

    So many questions...
 
    A better phrase would be...
    "Don't let anyone tell you that you can't do it, because they're probably right, and that's the last thing you need to hear right now."

    
    "We're all in this together."
    
    Ah, crap. I hate group projects. You guys are probably just going to slow me down.

    Honestly, though, when people say "We're all in this together", we usually aren't all in it together. Some people can leave it when they want. Others don't even want to be there in it in the first place. Others are never really are in it, but they like to pretend they are to make themselves look altruistic or something.

    Some things people have to just suffer alone. Their friends and family may lend support, but they are most certainly not in it. Only you can feel what you feel, don't let anyone tell you otherwise. Collective suffering will not help you feel any better.

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    A better phrase would be...
    "We care for you, but this is your problem. You'd better figure it out quick, because we're tired of your whining." 

    
    "Keep your chin up."
 
    Why? This is supposed to mean be happy, essentially, but how does keeping your chin up equate to being happy? The phrase originated in America, during the early 1900's, and the full original saying is, "Keep your chin up. Don't take your troubles to bed with you - hang them on a chair with your trousers or drop them in a glass of water with your teeth."

    Even in it's original context it makes no sense! The rest of it I get. It's saying, "Don't take your troubles with you to the next day, for tomorrow has troubles of it's own." But the chin thing...ugh.

    A better phrase would be...
    "Keep your chins up. All three of them. Fatty."
    

    "Failure is one step closer to success."
    
    False. Failure is always a step back. Failure usually adds more steps to the process.

    I suppose that is not true. Thomas Edison tested thousands of materials before he found the one that worked as a filament for the light-bulb design he stole. However, I refuse to use Edison as an example for any sort of virtuous behavior, because he was a no good, dirty-rotten, scheming scumbag.

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Well, you were never inspired, and you let other people do the sweating for you, so I think we can reasonably say that you, Mr. Edison, are no genius. But you are a dick.

    When you lose the race, the one where you were at your prime and had your best chance of winning, you are not one step closer to winning next time. You are demoralized, and that will effect your performance next time. You will be older next time, and probably slower.

    Plus, you lost. It was the biggest race of your life, and you FAILED. Sure, you came in a close second. Second place is just the first person to lose.

    A better phrase would be...
    "You failed. Suck it up and try again."

   "Losers are winners in the making."
    
    Unless they're just losers. And there are a lot of those in this world.

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Look at that loser. No wonder he lost, he's such a loser. "Loooooserrrrrrr!"

    Some people perpetually lose. Either they're unlucky or they're unskilled, but for whatever reason, they just can't get it together. They should probably learn to get used to failure at some point, otherwise they will live very sad lives.

    It's possible to not be a winner and still have a fulfilling life. It is not possible, however, if you go through your whole life with way higher expectations than you should have. That is a formula for depression.

    A better phrase would be...
    "Pick an easier hobby."

    "The only thing you have to fear is fear itself."

    This is a fantastic quote. When Franky R. said this in his inaugural address, it made sense in context. He was attempting to give the nation hope. He was, basically, telling people, "Hey, if you stick together and suck it up, we've got nothing to worry about."

    Sure, taken literally it was just as dumb as all the other phrases I'm critiquing, so this next bit may be a bit hypocritical or paradoxical: I only hate this phrase when people who are not directly quoting FDR use it. Even though it doesn't technically make any more sense in that context, at least it sounded noble or whatever. 

    When I'm talking about why I'm too afraid to go on that roller coaster or try that high-ropes coarse or eat those ultra super spicy hot wings, and someone casually tosses out, "Come on, man. The only thing you've got to fear is fear itself", and they think they're all clever? That is not a good time to be around me. I get grumpy when people are ignorant in my presence.

    Obviously telling myself not to be afraid isn't going to do anything. The fear is a psychological result of a biological resistance to putting myself in dangerous situations, like heights that could kill me or spices that could hurt like heck (Seriously, why do people find extreme spices good? Food isn't supposed to be a challenge, it's supposed to taste good. Food that hurts isn't worth eating.)

   Besides, that's not even what the phrase is supposed to mean. It's supposed to represent a willingness to press on, despite fears of failure and defeat, and through determination and hard work, defeat all the things that they had originally feared. It is not meant to suggest that people's fears are misplaced, because what they should really be afraid of is the sensation of fear. That is a turd of a concept.

    A better phrase would be...
    "Why are you afraid of that? That's nothing to be afraid of."

 
    "It ain't over till it's over."

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    "x or die trying." 
    "I'm going to get that girl or die trying!" "I'm going to climb that mountain or die trying!" "I'm going to get an A on the test or die trying!"

    YOU ARE NOT GOING TO DIE FROM DOING NON-DANGEROUS THINGS. Asking a girl out will not kill you, even though you may feel like you're dying on the inside when she says no. Don't risk it, bro. You're not going to die from taking a test unless you're deathly allergic to paper.

    Climbing a mountain may seem like a more valid use of this phrase, and to be fair many people have died climbing mountains. But thousands upon thousands more have not reached the summit of the mountain they were attempting to scale, and not died. They failed because they gave up. They failed because they knew they're limits and decided not to risk passing them.

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"On second though, I bet I could finish watching Lost in the time it would take to get halfway to the top. Yeah, I think I'll finish Lost. Lost is easier."

    Another mindnumbingly stupid phrase that goes along with this one is, "How do you know your limits, if you don't test them?" Imagine if people applied this to everything in life. The results would be horrifying.

    People would be eating themselves to death in order to find out how much food they can really eat in a day. Inversely, others would starve simply because they wanted to test how long they could go without food.

    Some would be speeding down the highway in order to test how fast they could really go before the cops decided to give chase. Others see just how many times they could run back and forth across the freeway before getting hit.

    We know our limits innately. If you think you are approaching your limit, then you are, because your limit is how far you can go before you realize that you've done something wrong or something might go bad.

     A better phrase would be...
    "Give up. At some point, hanging in there just makes you look like a bigger idiot."

    Well, that's it for now. I can't think of any other good ones, and my fingers kind of hurt from typing. I hope you either got enjoyment from reading these in a less-than-completely-serious manner, or you learned why a certain phrase that you overuse is obnoxious and makes people like me want to murder you. With love.