Seriously, stop whining...

Okay, this one is a bit of a rant. I recognize that. So, yeah... you will all just have to deal with it.

On the way into work today I was rocking it NPR-style, listening to world news. One of the days' stories was about a woman who was protesting that her underwire bra set off a metal detector at a local courthouse. The guards would not let her walk past their station to the bathroom to remove it, so she had her husband make a jacket shield for her and she removed it. Now she wants an official apology. I can understand that this was embarrassing. No one would want this. However, if someone had passed through with a personal explosive, we all would have said that the guards should have been more restrictive. There could have had a serious set of long-lasting consequences if it have gone really wrong.

Overall, this is a relatively minor issue. And to this lady's credit, she has not yet announced that she is filing suit against the guards and the county. I do not necessarily find this particular issue worth making a stink over, but I am regularly apalled at the use of law suits (in the MILLIONS of dollars) and the media to highlight and exploit emotional trauma and difficulty. It seems that many think that they deserve national attention when they are wronged. I find this particularly appalling when many of these "national" issues are such relatively minor issues. It makes you want to shake a person and ask if they have a non-self-absorbed bone in their body. Our country is at war. Our inner-city communities are dying due to continued discrimation and policy. Education is struggling to hold on. The building block of community, the family, seems so fragile, with rampant divorce, drug abuse, domestic violence, and estranged children. Turn your eyes to the world, and there are thousands of atrocities to be appalled over that deserve national attention.

It is amazing that in all of our social sensitivity training that the end product has been a bunch of whiners that cannot get over the negative events in their lives and cannot choose to take responsibilty to change things for the better. We seem to have medical answers for every psychological problem today. There was a day when people dealt with extreme tragedy and did not have access to mood elevators and a diagnosis to pull it together and move on with their lives. I am not saying that there is not a place for psychiatry. Rather, I protest that we have abused the science for the sake of creating a culture of victimhood and for the sake of increasing the dollars in our pockets, the doctors' pockets, and the pharm producers' pockets. Victimhood is all about continuing the cycle of money.

I have sat in on counseling sessions with people who have had legitimate tragedy in their life, supported them in praying through their past, and rejoiced as they moved on to a healthier, happier form of living. I have watched God heal people in amazing ways. So my question is this, would the same people who are demanding $2 Million for their emotional trauma be willing to donate $2 Million to a charity or the church if they were able to find healing and freedom from their past experience? Is that what their healing is worth to them? Or is this again about perpetuating the business of victimhood? The news needs something controversial to report. These people need an excuse to not be able to move on with their old life. Since they obviously cannot, they might as well get enough money to live comfortably without the need to work again. Who in their right mind can file these suits with a clean conscience, and why does the American public allow it and even support it?

Seriously people, we need to grow up and take responsibilty for our lives, no matter who messed with us in our past. No one is going to take responsibility to fix you but you. Even if you can get money for the trauma, what will that do for you in the long run? Of course there are legitimate times when a law suit should be brought, but we have created a culture of paranoia and victimhood. The media supports it because it somehow gets spun that we are progressive and sensitive, when instead this is like a twisted version of playing the lottery at the expense of our neighbors. Sure, we will be their friend up until the moment we realize they did something we might be able to sue for and rake in the money. This is sick. It is the entire opposite of being progressive and sensitive. We are willing to hold good people at an arms distance all for the sake of seeing how much money we can shake out of them, or their insurance.

Do you want to know why the spirit of American community is dying? Why do people rarely spend time conversing on porches, sharing meals with neighbors, and caring for each other's lives? We burned those bridges for the sake of convenience, personal comfort, and money. We destroyed the foundation for trust and commonality. We stopped giving each other the benefit of the doubt. We decided that while forgiveness may be free, the consequence of a failure should be more money than someone can make in their lifetime.

Seriously now, stop whining... Yes, you were mistreated. Yes, you have a right to have hurt feelings. Now it is up to you to forgive and take responsibilty to not let that experience define who you will be for the rest of your life.