Nobody really wants us to be happy and healthy

In a conversation between two comedians, one fat and one thin, the larger of the two teases his newly skinny colleague.

You shouldn’t have lost all that weight. There’s nothing funny about a physically fit man. It’s lame. Nobody wants to watch a healthy person do standup comedy. 

Sadly, this is more than a punchline, it’s an honest illustration of how healthy and happy individuals are not interesting, newsworthy or relatable in modern society. 

Despite the irony that the global fitness industry generates eighty billion dollars in revenue each year, not to mention the weight loss industry, which rakes in another twenty billion a year, along with the happiness and mindfulness industrial complex in third place with another ten billion, the sad reality is, nobody really wants us to be healthy or happy. 

Consider the societal implications of such a state. 

On the macro level, happy and healthy people are harder to control, harder to scare, and harder to sell consumer goods to. Which is a serious threat to our economic and political landscape. 

On a micro level, healthy and happy people are simply annoying. They are subtle reminders of the unhealthy choices of other people’s lives. 

It reminds me of the parody commercial about the depressant drug for the annoyingly cheerful. The lead scientist reports, if you’re in good mood every so often, that’s fine. That’s normal. But for the persistently positive, excessively perky, gratingly upbeat and insufferably cheery, this chemical intervention might be necessary. 

Take it from someone who has been publicly shamed most of his life for being happy and healthy. Take it from someone who feels bullied by people’s urges for be less optimistic and more normal. It sucks.

It sucks being someone others have to figure out what to do with. It sucks that my hopeful attitude is something people tolerate at best and loathe at worst. It sucks that having an unrelenting positive outlook can be can be seen as completely dysfunctional an inappropriate. It sucks not realizing how much my chipper attitude probably affects those around me. 

But it doesn’t suck so much that my hope will be shattered. 

My love will wear the world down eventually.

LET ME ASK YA THIS…

Who might be harboring a pocket of resentment towards your health and happiness? 

* * * *

Scott Ginsberg

That Guy with the Nametag

Author. Speaker. Strategist. Inventor. Filmmaker. Publisher. Songwriter.  

[email protected]

www.nametagscott.com

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