Justice?: A Rant with a Purpose (and a challenge)

Okay, so I’m doing my laundry yesterday at good ole Golden Isles Cleaners and Laundromat over on Altama (partly because of my broken-down dryer and partly because of the gratis wifi hotspot) and I notice a gaggle of old ladies over in the corner commenting on the show that was being shown on the big screen.  I’m not sure what exactly the name of the show was, but it was one of those judge shows.  You know the type:  Judge Judy, Judge Mills Lane, Judge Brown, Jury Duty, Pet Court, Family Court, etc.

I sat there for a moment just listening to the pathetic rants of the various (forgive me if this is mean) white-trash “plaintiffs/defendants” and started to get angry.  I’m talking “Hulk Smash” angry.  What a filthy, rotten perversion our society has made of justice where small people broadcast their small problems to a world of laundromats and old ladies with nothing better to do than to act as if these people and their problems actually mean something to them.

Now, I get that as humans, we all have an inward desire to see justice done, but come on…by Judge Judy?

I actually had to fight the urge to stand on top of the uncomfortable plastic chair I was seated in and start ranting about how people had no right to expect real justice for themselves if this garbage was the only justice they exposed themselves to, but I didn’t because then, I’d be no better than the rest of ranting people in this world who choose to do nothing.  So…as of today, I’ve decided to passionately pursue justice in my life.  What does that mean?  Well, I’m figuring it out, but it looks something like this:

-Suppose, like today at lunch, I pass a piece of trash on the ground on my way out the door of my favorite coffee shop.  That piece of trash is an injustice in this world.  It’s small, sure, but it’s an injustice.  It makes the whole area look bad and immediately makes me think negatively about that coffee shop.  Justice would be to pick that piece of trash up and toss it.

-Suppose, like yesterday, I see a man yelling at his little girl in McDonald’s for no good reason, saying things like “Jesus Christ, you drive me f*&#ing nuts!” as he storms away.  That man has committed an injustice on his child.  Justice for me was to walk up to her before I left and say “You’re a pretty little girl.  I like your glasses.  They kinda look like mine.”  Her smile told me justice had been done.

El Ben is issuing a challenge to you:  As you go about your day, open yourself up to see the injustice around you and what you can do to change it.  Take a little action, it doesn’t have to be huge, just something to chip a little bit off the injustice around us.

Maybe with a lot of us taking some small steps to restore justice to the world, we won’t have to depend on garbage like I saw on the T.V. to satisfy our sense of it.

The Problem with Pain

I’m a young guy and as such, I’ve rarely felt the gut-wrenching agony that older, more experienced people talk about from things like losing a child, getting unexpectedly laid off, or burying their parents. I’m talking, of course, about emotional pain, because physical pain I can deal with. I’m really good at turning on the ignore switch and just dealing with it. I can even deal with it without medication. Heck, I prefer to deal with it without medication.

Emotional pain, however, I’m not so good with. Despite being a “drama llama” (thanks Renee), I really don’t like people to know what I’m feeling, a habit that I picked up from my dad. Giving people insight into my emotional state makes me feel weak, so I avoid it like the plague, and we all know how healthy that is. I guess my question this week for you guys is this: How do you (or don’t you) deal with pain? Do you self-medicate (overeat, overspend, etc), do you numb yourself, or do you have your own little way of handling it?

Spill.