Anyone who has lived through high school has heard the phrase, “I hate my life.” I would like to bet all Villanova students have heard it uttered by a peer or declared it themselves. Everyone has a friend who must announce the ultimate proclamation of hopeless negativity at least three times a week. Perhaps he or she mixes it up with variations of the phrase, including, “My life sucks,” or drop “my,” and you have the one that especially bothers me, “Life sucks.” Its generality grabs my life – with which I am, for the most part, satisfied – from my own judgment and throws it atop a heaping pile of odorously bleak discontent, which dirties and demeans it.

Declarations of life-hatred are often disregarded because we largely assume that people do not literally mean what they say, but the lack of meaning in such proclamations is what always catches my attention. People do not think about what they say before they open their mouths to announce their disenchantment with their own lives or existence in general. I am not qualified to tell someone what he or she ought to think about life, just as he or she is not entitled to include my life in his or her sweeping thrash at the world. There are people who seriously hate their lives and would give anything in the world to trade situations with a person who curses life when provoked by a bad test grade or a boring Saturday night. They would love for their problems to be so simple.

I do not believe people mean what they say when they announce their abhorrence for life; therefore, the reason for my being turned off by the all-too-frequent declaration has nothing to do with a depression I feel at the miserable truthfulness. My repulsion is born in the lack of thought and neglect of consideration for what such a statement proclaims. When someone tells me, “I hate my life,” he or she speaks more than those four words. I hear him or her say, “I am a selfish, ungrateful weakling who cannot deal with school-induced stress and am without the imagination to entertain myself or the energy to pull myself out of my own wallowing.”

At first, I thought people wanted me to give them my hand and fight the forces of their funks, but then I thought if they really wanted to escape, they would fight themselves. When people are sinking in the quicksand of their own creation and take no pains to alleviate their sad situations, they do not want to work to get out, and they do not want me to help pry them out. All they want is to inject their whining into my soul, like venom, so that I fall prey, and they can then drag me into their pit of despair and have some company. It happens a lot: one person complains and pretty soon there is an entire crowd of grumbling pessimists, subsisting on one another’s negativity. Do not join.

Finals are approaching in a few weeks, and thus, the propensity for people to sulk and succumb to their frustrations in vocal flogs at life in general will soon reach its height. You are going to hear “I hate my life” a lot. Maybe you will even say it once or twice, but instead of thoughtlessly drooling words out of your mouth, take a second to think about what you allow to fall from your lips before you open them. Think, and you will discover there is a lot in life to love and a lot to lose. You would not give it up, so do not disgrace it by giving in to bad days and hellish weeks. Do not discredit yourself.

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Georgie Hunt is a sophomore English major from Pomfret, Conn. She can be reached at [email protected].