Aira's Library

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Everything Inside You Will Fight Improvement.

Posted on Wednesday, April 30, 2014
Posted at 12:50 AM

The human mind is a miracle, and you will never see it spring more beautifully into action than when it is fighting against evidence that it needs to change. Your psyche is equipped with layer after layer of defense mechanisms designed to shoot down anything that might keep things from staying exactly where they are -- ask any addict.

So even now, some of you reading this are feeling your brain bombard you with knee-jerk reasons to reject it. From experience, I can say that these seem to come in the form of ...

*Intentionally Interpreting Any Criticism as an Insult

"Who is he to call me lazy and worthless! A good person would never talk to me like this! He wrote this whole thing just to feel superior to me and to make me feel bad about my life! I'm going to think up my own insult to even the score!"

*Focusing on the Messenger to Avoid Hearing the Message

"Who is THIS guy to tell ME how to live? Oh, like he's so high and mighty! It's just some dumb writer on the Internet! I'm going to go dig up something on him that reassures me that he's stupid, and that everything he's saying is stupid! This guy is so pretentious, it makes me puke! I watched his old rap video on YouTube and thought his rhymes sucked!"

"When you get to where I am in life, you feel free to give me advice! Until then, you're nothing but meat and guesses."

*Focusing on the Tone to Avoid Hearing the Content

"I'm going to dig through here until I find a joke that is offensive when taken out of context, and then talk and think only about that! I've heard that a single offensive word can render an entire book invisible!"

*Revising Your Own History

"Things aren't so bad! I know that I was threatening suicide last month, but I'm feeling better now! It's entirely possible that if I just keep doing exactly what I'm doing, eventually things will work out! I'll get my big break, and if I keep doing favors for that pretty girl, eventually she'll come around!"

*Pretending That Any Self-Improvement Would Somehow Be Selling Out Your True Self

"Oh, so I guess I'm supposed to get rid of all of my manga and instead go to the gym for six hours a day and get a spray tan like those Jersey Shore douchebags? Because THAT IS THE ONLY OTHER OPTION."

"Way to leave 'the hood' behind, asshole. New house or not, you'll always be white trash!"

Read our article comments -- when they get nasty, it's always from the same angle: Cracked needs to fire this columnist. This asshole needs to stop writing. Don't make any more videos. It always boils down to "Stop creating. This is different from what I would have made, and the attention you're getting is making me feel bad about myself."

..and so on. Remember, Misery is comfortable. it's why so many people prefer it. Happiness takes effort. Also Courage. it's incredibly comforting to know that as long as you don't create anything in your life, then nobody can attack the thing you created.

it's so much easier to just sit back and critise other people's creations. This movie stupid. That couple's kids are brats. That other couple's relationship is a mess. That rich guy is shallow. This restaurent sucks. This internet writter is an asshole, i'd better leave a mean comment demanding that the website fire him. See, i created something.

oh, wait, did i forget to mention that part? Yeah, whatever you try to build or create -- be it a poem, or a new skill, or a new relationship -- you will find yourself immeadiately surrounded by non-creators who trash it. Maybe not to your face, but they'll do it. Your drunk friends do not want you to get sober. Your fat friends do not want you to start a fitness regimen. Your jobless friends do not want to see you embark on a career.

Just remember, they're only expressing their own fear, since thrashing other people's work is another excuse to do nothing.

"why should i create anything when the things other people create suck? I would totally have written a novel by now, but i'm going to wait for something good, i don't want to write the next Twillight"

As long as they never produce something, they'll make sure they do it with detached irony. They'll make it intentionally bad to make it clear to everyone else that this isn't their real effort. Their real effort would have been amazing. not like the shit you made.

Don't be that person. If you are that person, don't be that person any more. This is what's making people hate you. This is what's making you hate yourself.

What are you going to do with it? Hunt witches or kick off the Olympics?

So how about this: one year. The end of 2014, that's our deadline. Or a year from whenever you read this. While other people are telling you "Let's make a New Year's resolution to lose 15 pounds this year!" I'm going to say let's pledge to do fucking anything -- add any skill, any improvement to your human tool set, and get good enough at it to impress people. Don't ask me what -- hell, pick something at random if you don't know. Take a class in karate, or ballroom dancing, or pottery. Learn to bake. Build a birdhouse. Learn massage. Learn a programming language. Adopt a superhero persona and fight crime. Start a YouTube vlog. Write for Cracked.

But the key is, I don't want you to focus on something great that you're going to make happen to you ("I'm going to find a girlfriend, I'm going to make lots of money ..."). I want you to purely focus on giving yourself a skill that would make you ever so slightly more interesting and valuable to other people.

"Holy shit, by learning Spanish, I just gained the ability to speak to 400 million people I previously couldn't."

"I don't have the money to take a cooking class." Then fucking Google "how to cook." They've even filtered out the porn now, it's easier than ever. Damn it, you have to kill those excuses. Or they will kill you.

we'll look back, not just on whether or not we actually followed through, but why. You have nothing to lose, and the world needs you.