Hurt Your Feelings

I tell you this as a friend. It won’t be easy for you, but worthwhile things in life seldom are.

Your feelings deserve to be hurt. 

No guarantee exists in life that your feelings will be unhurt. No more so than your bones or flesh. In fact; let’s start off with your bones. Remember when you were a little kid, and your bones throbbed in pain all the time? What did the grownups call that?

Growing pains. A signal that your body is healthy and becoming larger. I apologize if you’re a dwarf or little person; this may not have applied to you, but instead, you’ll have other painful experiences that perform a similar purpose.

Pain -> Healing -> Improvement.

When something or someone “hurts your feelings”, you reexamine those feelings in an attempt to understand why they hurt. Then you come back improved. Your convictions are stronger. You are stronger.

“Feeling the burn” of a workout indicates that the tiny fibers of your muscles are tearing, which in two days’ time will make them thicker and stronger. That is how you build muscle mass; by hurting the very fibre of your being, and allowing time to heal. Even fitness (excepting probably yoga) operates on a pain-and-gain system.

So why shouldn’t your feelings get hurt?

Think of all the things you stopped doing in life because someone laughed at you. Not just fashion faux-pas; behaviors, and expressions you used. Little jabs people made at you. Most of the time, people ridicule things they don’t like just because they don’t like them. Out of a subconscious hope that those things will go away forever.

My point is, if something or someone hurt your feelings, maybe you already know the reason why.

Here’s another horrific confession: I am often an emotional savage with women. The more attractive I find a girl, the more callously I will test her limits. There is nothing hotter to me than a beautiful female delivering a savage burn on someone, in that manner that only the fair sex can. It never affects “bitchiness”, or “cattiness”; it is the incredible sound of a woman holding court with men. Not as a member of either gender, an object of desire, or “one of the boys”, but as a treasured presence. When you see it, when it honestly and organically happens, you’ll know in the reactions of the men present. They don’t know how to tell her, but she’s more than earned her keep socially.

Nobody delivers a burn like a girl who doesn’t give a fuck. Nobody. Why do you think so many of these current comediennes disappoint? Because we know what they’re innately capable of, and they don’t do it. Or they do, and then renege later. That’s even more disappointing; that’s betrayal. We believed in their ability to cut the shit, and instead they complimented it.

Back to the confession. To my eternal discredit, I presume that any girl I’m attracted to or involved with has the same sense of humor as I do, and can take whatever I can take. You know how real schizophrenics don’t realize they’re schizophrenic? It’s like that. I also think that any woman I’m dating knows everything that I know, which is equally problematic and might actually be schizophrenia.

Almost no woman on planet Earth has the same sense of humor that I do. It’s unpossible. If I found out one did, I would change mine just to fuck with her and see what happened. YES, I’M ALONE, STUPID!

Here’s another reason I am. There’s a spot on a woman’s body, roughly where the kidney is, above the hip. If you take your pointer finger and gently but firmly poke that spot, one of a wide rainbow of reactions will occur, ranging from playful surprise to painful counterstrike. Expect assault charges if used in the workplace. Now you know, too! Now you know! Ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha!!!

Seriously, if you’re a married man and you didn’t know that, I just slipped a loaded weapon into your home. It’s now only a matter of time. It’s like a secret “divorce mode” button. If you’re a married woman reading this, either keep it from your husband or start dressing like a giant turtle.

Another relevant reason that I am single: the more attractive a woman is, the more I will tease her*. As soon as she so much as mentions in passing a band she likes, I will say the most insulting thing I can cough up about them. I will go out of my way to insult female musicians and performers while around her to see how she responds. This is all a diabolical scheme so I can determine where her motivations lie. 

[*Teasing is a natural part of flirtation and courtship, if done properly and in good spirit. Mean-spirited teasing is childish and hurts feelings in a way that’s unhealthy; for example, teasing someone for something they cannot change.]

Hot girls have no need for good taste in music. They oftentimes never develop any sense of music appreciation; they don’t have to. They can be expensive furniture if they so desire. They’ve never been validated or noticed for anything but their appearance. If a hot girl likes a good band or musician, I am surprised, then disappointed later when I learn that she only likes them because one of her ex-boyfriends did (or she dated the musician in question). This is the way it goes. If a girl’s looks are the focus of her young life, so it will be, even after those looks change.

Shy girls will use music to relate to guys and other people. They will have a greater understanding and appreciation for what is required to make great music. Nine times out of ten, they will play an instrument, either in school marching band, or a combo. Once they open up, they can maintain a conversation about music, because they have a working body of knowledge on a passionate subject. Shy girls are the ones who keep things going a lot of the time. That’s why I tend to take it easy on stuff they enjoy; they don’t tell you that you hurt their feelings anyway, you just take a beating from their friends later.

Girls who get insulted on behalf of performers they like, and don’t know personally, feel a subconscious desire to be that performer. This is normal for boys too, but we get it knocked out of us in school, by meaner boys, or later on, by the realities of musical performance. Girls are encouraged to develop a deeper connection to singers who have no real import on their lives, and whom they will never meet face-to-face. This connection lasts longer in the girl’s life than is proper, for the music in question. And only rarely is a female performer spotlighted for any ability on an instrument, other than voice. Which is free, and a huge percentage of people think they can sing anyway.

And now there’s autotune, so male R&B artists don’t even have to be able to sing anymore, so this applies to guys too. You want to know what male R&B artists used to possess, as far as vocal ability? Try this on for size. Pay particular attention to the range displayed.

That’s why I have to keep hurting feelings. There’s lots of music like that song. There’s no reason to listen to any singer using “autotune”. It’s an insult to the listener. It implies that you can’t handle sophisticated songwork and instrumentation. It suggests that vocal ability is no big whoop. A shallow, mass-produced imitation is more your speed. Something any slob can mix on a laptop. Why would you defend that kind of thing over Lou Rawls? Isn’t that an insult to him, and others like him, who had real talent and gave everything?

That’s how stupid you look listening to crap. Like someone who’d step on a sirloin steak while crossing the street to buy a Big Mac.

If the above line or anything else here hurts your feelings, don’t despair. The pain simply means that the healing is about to begin.