Dear Cynic,
How fascinating life must be for those that look around and live as if they’re in the most depressing A24 film ever made. The sun may shine, but it only does so to shed light on the misshapen parts of others you feel the need to point out. Time progresses and you remain a stubborn thorn in the side of not optimism but neutrality. If I’ve described you, there is hope to change but it’s not directly throwing your heart into toxic positivity.
Leniency or potential shift in opinion on basic categories or hobbies isn’t even in the back of your mind. But then again, if you’re a cisgender white man you’ve never had expand past your initial reaction. There’s been a toxicity in assuring others your opinion is either correct or worth more than those around it. For you, there’s no potential for beauty in the absurd or perspective in the spontaneous. The freedom in speaking opinion within a space you reside in feels almost impossible. You’ve grown accustomed to examining your own ideologies, often full of immediate flips of optimism, and disregarding any room to improve them.
There’s no space for others, why should there be when the decrepit kingdom of your mind is at peace without necessary change? It rots and smells of sulfur gasses, the waft of drying resin and is as cold and unchanging as cement. Breaking through that doesn’t come and that’s an easier way to live…according to you. Life must be so fucking miserable. Wait, no life doesn’t suck (aspects of it can). You’ve decided to stay in the dark rabbit hole of cynicism, even if that comes at the cost of others around you. You didn’t help dig yourself out of the hole, because in the end it benefits you.
The worst part comes when someone like myself feels the need to appeal to or change the mind of a cynic like you. It’s a fruitless challenge. You’re not an important figure in my life, yet I’ve treated you as such. I’ve made you into something that looms over my abilities, talents and more. Struggle comes from being near you and your overflow of “Yeah, but…” ways of thinking. There’s no assumption of neutrality first, it’s always the negative. Life is too short and my mental health is struggling, go to the shame corner.
