You Can't make Everyone Happy

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You Can’t Make Everyone Happy – Nope!Published on September 21, 2010 by David Askaripour in Life, Newsletter

4 You cannot live for your own pleasure and your own convenience without inevitably hurting and injuring the feelings and the interests of practically everybody else you meet…most people more or less live for themselves and for their own interests and pleasures or for those of their own family or group, and therefore they are constantly interfering with one another’s aims, and hurting one another and injuring one another, whether they mean it or not.—Thomas Merton

I hurt people. I try as best as possible not to, but simply being who I am brings pain to people. Not working a regular 9 to 5 annoys the hell out of people. Meditating in silence confuses people. Not trying to become a millionaire confuses people even more! Not continuing with my education after four years of college makes me look ignorant and uneducated to some. Letting my beard grow disgusts some. Not eating meat pisses a great many of people off — some of whom are always ready for a fiery argument about how unhealthy and stupid I am for not eating a burger. Being half-Jamaican and half-Persian I’m sure also stirs up some hate in the racist’s mind. Living in a tree made me a target of hatred for those that wished to cut down the forest.

Yes, I hurt people! Unintentionally, but nonetheless. Some people do hate me. People are pissed at me. Yes, simply by being who I am, I’m going to offend someone. Maybe even you. This is unavoidable. Inevitable. Expected. This is life. We are never going to please everyone. And the more one tries to please the entire world, the more miserable, “safe,” and stiff they become. The more mechanical and robotic they become as they ever program themselves deeper into the system of “make everyone like me.”

If everyone likes you, then surely you’re not truly living life. How could you be? If everyone likes you, then surely you must hate yourself. How could you not?

■I say: Be yourself.
■I say: Fuck it! Who cares if everyone doesn’t like you.
■I say: Whateverrrr…..
■I say: Buenooo…. Esta biennn… No me importa.
■I say: “Do you!”
■I say: “Be you!”

I was talking with a client on the phone the other day and she had the sort of personality of a over educated, sexually deprived, pissed off college professor that takes every chance to bash a student’s mistake because it’s her way of releasing her pent up anger and aggression of living a life that she hates. Yeah, this was her style. And it pissed me off that she wanted to argue in between every sentence — every breath! After I got off the phone, I said to myself “whatever… that’s just what she’s dealing with right now. I’m a bit angry, but no biggy. I’m sure that my youtube videos have aroused the same exact sort of sentiment that I felt with her.”

So what’s the idea here? Have the bravery to follow-through with your life. It’s scary, I know. I hate the feeling knowing that “me being me” is hurting others. But I can’t stop being me — for if I did, I’d be hurting myself. So let us have the courage to walk through the fear of offending others. It’s going to happen and there’s no escaping it. And that’s that.