My New Mantra

I've decided that it's no longer necessary for me to be shocked and amazed when I hear about somebody doing something clearly nuts.  So my new mantra is, "People:  We be crazy!"

How is it possible that I either read about or hear about many, many utterly dysfunctional things that we do every day?  I would think that the majority of us are behaving in a fairly sane way most of the time.  Maybe we are, and that doesn't make the news. 

On the other hand, what I think is crazy is not necessarily the same as what everyone thinks is crazy. 

I think it's crazy for example, that when we try desperately to do everything to get everyone's approval (and some of us do this our whole lives), it never, ever works.  You'd think we'd notice this, but apparently we don't.

You'd think that by now we would have noticed that getting more and more stuff absolutely never, ever makes us happy.  After we've shown off our new stuff for a little while, we're back to square one wanting some more stuff.  Even considering the constant brainwashing of advertising, it looks like we would start seeing through it and turn our attention some place else - some place that would actually make us happy.

There's a huge amount of very reliable information about what will create a healthy body.  But either we don't believe it or we don't want to believe it.  Fresh fruit and vegetables.  Good protein.  Exercise and decreased stress.  Instead we take a lot of pills and gripe.  We're living longer but we're sicker. 

There's also an enormous amount of reliable information about how to parent, but it seems to me that most people just assume they already know how to do it.  Then we just do what our parents did without even thinking about it.  Hmmmm.  If we really wanted to create a better world, we'd be trying to find out how to parent so that our kids could grow up to be somewhat less dysfunctional.  I'm going to guess that if you chose ten people at random and had them explain what they thought a parent should do, all of them would have a different idea and be adamant that everyone but them was wrong.

Basic personal finance seems to be a mystery to a lot of us.  Things like paying for necessities before other things, saving for emergencies, how to earn more and spend less...Not a lot of us following these basics.

Then there's personal relations...Many of us seem to think that being critical, complaining incessantly, making demands on others, and trying to get others to be like we think they should be are the ways to have enjoyable relationships.  And, of course, those ways of being with people are destructive and cause nothing but trouble.

Health, relationships with others, basic finance and knowledge of how to be peaceful seem to be critical to our well-being.  But we seem to be ignoring them.
What's up with that?  People:  we be crazy.