Thursday, April 29, 2010

FML

You know what it stands for. When you say you're having a bad day, you have not only defined your day. You have defined yourself. That was always the case until the dawn of the current era of mass communication. Now, when you have a crappy day, you not only make it so in your mind but you repeat the process countless times in text messages, Tweets and Facebook posts. In fact, the maelstrom of daily communication, no matter how inane, has barely allowed us to take a step back and look at what we've become. Well, I have chosen these three letters as where I am taking my stand: FML. As I said, you know what it stands for. NOW is the time to take a step back. Think of what you're saying. Now think of the implications of packaging such a thought in such a neat little expression and tossing it around like it's a sigh or a yawn. Are you getting me? Am I off base? Am I out of line? Does it mean nothing? George Carlin once said that we think in language so the quality of our language affects the quality of our thoughts. How about the quality of our lives? You can have a bad experience, extrapolate it into more bad experiences by fixating on the first one, write off the rest of the day as a 'bad day' then RELIVE the entire saga in multiple electronic formats and arrive finally at the grand finale of summarily dismissing your LIFE with three letters. Just think about it, folks. I'm a passenger like all of you but we can take that step back even as fast as life can be these days. Remember the immortal words of one Ferris Bueller:

"Life moves pretty fast. If you don't stop and look around once in a while, you could miss it"

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