Like Sarah Stokely, I'm sick of the
emergence of the “cult of hard”.
"HTFU" is yet another piece of
plastic solidarity, invented only so that the arsehats at the top of
corporations can justify their “we own you so do as we say!”
Invented to ruin lives, steal weekends, cancel holidays, eliminate sick leave – and
adopted out in the community by suckers, racists, toad-eaters,
pole-climbers, place-seekers and all that drops from the arse of the
corporate world onto the anchor-fluke of the ship of commerce.
“Harden the fuck up” leads to nets
under Foxconn dormitory flats to catch the jumpers, to trolls that
don't think “ape” is a racist insult to an Aborigine footballer,
to miserable lives of desperation no longer quiet, to silent misery
after yet-another-buggering by a priest.
In my father, enough “hard” to
serve in WW2 meant a man who was never completely sane until his
death from Alzheimer's Disease in 1989.
To hell with hard. And here's my
Twitter-stream because I'm proud I found the words. With thanks to
@stokely who started it.
@stokely The world doesn't need more
hard. It needs more soft. I'm as hard as a lemonade sandwich.
"Strong" != "Hard".
All that follows is me as @r_chirgwin.
I have suspension points where thoughts spanned more than one Tweet.
In general, "HTFU" and
variations on the theme are just evangelising passive conformity.
Takes a lot more "hard" to speak than not.
Someone says "this is rotten",
and a whole heap of vested interests say "harden up"...
…(And a chorus of eunuchs chimes in
aligned with their meal tickets). Who's strong? The vested interest,
or the ordinary person saying "no"?
I'd rather admire the "soft
person" who trembled at the knees and spoke up, than the
conformist saying "harden up" or any of its variants.
"Strong" is a virtue. "Hard"
is not. Ask my wife: I'm soft. But you won't get a hammer through my
skin...
…and in the face of hell and death
and illness and all the rest, we're 26 years together and still hold
each other every night.
The "harden up" crew in the
world look a lot less potent if you imagine them in tunics with
pom-poms...
…the cheerleaders of a toxic culture
introduced to the world by people like Al Dunlap. It's not something
to aspire to. It's to despise.
If you love your loves and love your
happiness, love your ability to be moved to tears or appreciate
beauty, NEVER "harden the fuck up".
People who say "yes" in fear
of the horror of being disdained by the boss aren't "hard".
They're followers hoping the arrows don't hit them.
And the jewels you win by being "hard
as concrete" won't be more than glass when live turns to shit
and desperation.
The only things worth holding are love
and laughter, and those things you do because they strike at your
heart. The rest is chaff.
…........
I ended the Twitter-rant because dinner
was served. It was a home-made chicken pie, cooked by Ms T, with leek
and mushroom in a cream sauce. Served with chat potatoes in butter
and parsley. OK, she ran with frozen peas as well!
She is seriously ill and on
chemotherapy for an immune system disorder, and her chronic pain is
good enough for synthetic opiods. And she and I live on the
knife-edge of expertise: what's enough chemo to keep her immune
system down, but not so much that it causes cancer (she had two
tumours removed last year)?
“Cooking for you guys [me and our
sons] is the last thing I'll let go,” she said tonight.
I'll take your HTFU and raise it “love
through the pain”. Even with a pair of twos in my hand, I'll win.
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