“You need something happening in your life; you’re too boring, man’’ were the words that got him reflecting on his life. The fact that they were spoken by the most ‘happening’ person he knew had a singularly depressing effect.
On being ‘happening’
“You need something happening in your life; you’re too boring, man’’ were the words that got him reflecting on his life. The fact that they were spoken by the most ‘happening’ person he knew had a singularly depressing effect. Like being stabbed multiple times in the gut with a blunt knife. The fact that the place was crawling with other people, “happening” to different degrees, only added insult to injury.
In many ways, he was stripped of all his illusions that day. Deep down he knew he was boring but didn’t have the courage to accept it. Now, his true self was laid bare for all to see.
He decided to take a look at what exactly he was doing and how exactly did it make him look boring. He was a finance student with a part-time accounting job. Boring enough, so far. Had some interest in books, the advent of motion picture cinemas was lost on him. His taste in music was also potentially damning. He thought the likes of ‘Stairway to Heaven’ and ‘Sweet Child O’ Mine’ should receive universal praise. Laughable really when legends like Avicii and One Direction still roamed the surface of the earth. He also liked to have some knowledge of what was happening in the world, so he read a bit of news every now and then. Like he could accomplish anything with that. What was needed were insights into who was dating whom and who broke up with whom - the real intergalactic stuff, you know. However, perhaps the most damaging of all was that he wasn’t particularly rich (this being a euphemism for poor), and wasn’t particularly good looking (bordering on ugly) in a way that wiry, brown (bordering on black) humanoids generally are not.
He couldn’t deny it now. Looking at himself from the perspective of someone who was actually ‘happening’, he concluded that he wasn’t just boring, he was outright vapid. A change was needed. He resolved to become ‘happening’ and shed the stigma of ‘boring’.
The first step was a bit of reshuffling of the apps on his phone. Out went trash like BBC and in came gems like Instagram and Snapchat. In his previous life, he would have thought these were quite useless. In fact, his favourite line about these was, “they’re like Facebook and Twitter for people who can’t write which, in themselves, are pretty useless’’. But he had seen the light now. He would now broadcast pretty much everything actually to unsuspecting creatures who made the mistake of adding him. The fact that it would add absolutely no value to any of their lives was secondary. If he was out having fun with his friends, this wouldn’t make him ‘happening’ unless his peers could see him having fun through one of these extremely fun apps.
But in order to be truly successful in this game, what he really needed to do was immerse himself in the language. He used to foolishly think that it was English or any other natural language. Upon close inspection, though, he delineated the rules. One was that punctuation didn’t really matter but emoticons did. Writing ‘I’m happy for you’, conveyed very little. If he really cared, he would have to write something like ‘Imm soo happy for youuu (insert a couple of red, green, purple whatever hearts)’. Sentence structure did not really matter. In fact, coming up with any sort of combination of words could be simply dispensed with. For instance, he wants to caption a photo of himself chilling on the beach (and he’s putting this picture up because he now knows that all his fun would count for nothing if people who had nothing to do with his recreational activities did not get punished with it in their newsfeeds). He need not undertake the Herculean task of actually writing a sentence. A few cute hashtags could do it for him e.g. #sun #sky #me #fun #sand #water #goodlife #goodfriends #food #blueshirt #blackshorts #myfriendsarebetterthanyours #ramblingnow #gottastop #untilnexttime. All right, many hashtags, not a few. But everyone had to make a few sacrifices every now and then. Hemingway and Shakespeare must be thanking their lucky stars they weren’t born in this age of eloquent prose.
Certain rituals had to be followed. He had to leave his personal mark on any event of significance. His photo with the flag on Independence Day would boost the morale of the troops. His proclamation of his love for his wonderful father on Father’s Day enriched everyone’s lives. Same with Mother’s Day, the overly special sequence of posts on overly special friends’ birthdays, etc. all were paramount in the quest of becoming ‘happening’.
There were other things he had to correct, too. That awful habit of using those overly wordy sentences had to go. He rightly concluded that there was nothing in ‘Congratulations on a job well done’ that wasn’t conveyed by saying “You go girl” in a high pitched voice.
Another cardinal sin to avoid was conveying to anyone the news that academic research has yielded the result that taking selfies is associated with narcissism and self-objectification. Perhaps the more serious offence is that you tell them this when they’re all dressed up and made up in anticipation that they’ll feature in selfies at various points in the day. This made you categorically ‘un-happening’.
A mental note he made was that in no circumstance could he decline to dance if opportunity arose or go out with friends because that is how the “happening” people have fun. It didn’t matter that he didn’t like the genre of music people generally dance to and that nobody in the world can dance to Stairway to Heaven, or that he was naturally predisposed to feeling awkward in such situations.
Among the things that he could have done to right his historical wrongs, there were a few he couldn’t help. Given that he was not particularly rich and particularly good looking (remember?), he had to be extra careful with making sense in heated situations since a bark at someone could come back and bite him in the ankle (for lack of a better organ) since people at the other end of the spectrum had it easier as they did in all other things. But he was ‘happening’ now, or was at least making an attempt to be; all he had to sacrifice was his dignity, self-respect and himself.
