Once – and this is a true story by the way – on a mad whim, I conjured up a powerful magical genie and gave him the task of constantly praising me, praising me no matter what I did. Good, bad or whatever – it didn’t matter, I had always to be right, I always had to be the best. That was my bag. Furthermore, I set this genie above me, in a position of both unquestionable and unimpeachable authority, so that whatever it said I automatically believed. I wouldn’t be able to disbelieve it. This second step is quite essential of course, as we all know. Absolute gullibility is the key to the whole thing.
Everything went fine to start off with – the whole thing ran itself, as you might imagine. It worked like clockwork – I’d be going around the place, doing whatever it was that I was doing, getting involved in whatever crap it was that I happened to be involved in, and all the while this invisible magical genie friend of mine would be whispering sweetly in my ear, telling me how great I was, praising me for my stellar performance, admiring my style, and so on. You name it, he praised it. In a thousand different ways this genie companion of mine was telling me how unique I was, how special I was, and how other people were just ridiculous pathetic dipsticks. A shower of gobshytes and nothing more.
Even when I fucked up in style (in ways that no one could deny) my little magic buddy would straightaway take my side: ‘It was their fault that you had to do that, not yours’, he would tell me – ‘they are the bad ones, not you. They’re the bad ones and they obviously needed to be taught a lesson. They need to be taught a lesson they won’t ever forget…’ They needed to pay for their low-down behaviour, obviously. They needed to pay, and pay good. ‘Hurt them’, the sneaky little voice in my ear would whisper with unashamed malice, ‘hurt them real bad because they deserve it…’
So anyway, that was all good, that was all fine. That was all much as you might expect. No surprises there, right? But you’ve guessed the end of this little tale already my friends, haven’t you. You know it already and so there’s no real need for me to continue. You already know how it goes, how it always goes. I’ll say no more about it on that account – I’m boring myself already. It goes in the way it always goes and that makes it as tedious as hell in my book. It’s a clockwork mechanism after all – it’s paint drying on the wall. It’s a mechanism doing exactly what you programmed it to do. And it isn’t going to stop. Oh well, you live and learn – so they say – but I think the real point here is that you live and don’t learn! That’s kind of more like it, if we were to be honest. If unicorns could tap dance, etc, etc. …
‘Hurt them real bad because they deserve it’. That’s a good line isn’t it. That’s a corker for sure. Wouldn’t you say. A right hoot. Without warning, I suddenly find myself chuckling in sentimental remembrance. Two big fat lugubrious tears started their slow, irregular journey down the seams of my leathery cheeks. Before long I was sobbing uncontrollably. They were the good old days, I said to myself dolefully, the good old days when everything was great, when I was lost in endless samsara and all that kind of business.
Image credit – dcmp.org