Ranjona Banerji | Is a foolish ‘friend’ worse than a ghosting frenemy?

The biggest challenge I’ve put myself through over the past few years is to control my temper. This is inordinately difficult because most humans are terribly stupid and annoying. If you have a short fuse, then you’re really stuck. At every turn there’s some dimwit doing dimwit things.

Let me make a list of what you people do to me.

There are those with the seemingly incurable “stating the obvious” disease. Let’s say I post a photograph of a setting sun on social media and I write a caption saying “The burning orb says goodbye for the day”. I get it, am trying too hard to be poetic and you are welcome to take issue with that. But why reply: That is the sun.

Like, what? Do you think I do not know that? Why do you think I’ve put up this photograph? Do you think the other people who look at this photograph do not know what the sun is unless you make this asinine, anodyne comment? Do you think you are being clever by showing off your knowledge about something we see and feel every single day of our lives, by both its presence and absence?

As an aside, there are some who even if I write: “This is the sun”, will reply with: “That is the sun”. I suspect they are beyond hope.

My challenge for myself is not to react, not to snap, not to make a waspish remark. Which is what I so dearly want to do!

Then there’s the “take things literally” disease, which thankfully afflicts less people than the stating the obvious disease. The symptoms surface when, for instance, I might post a photograph of the sun, and then say it is burning hot. Immediately after I will be asked if the temperature where I am is very high and why am I feeling hot. These people are very intelligent but they are unable to understand context, and therefore it does not occur to them that because I say the sun is burning hot it does not necessarily follow that I am feeling burning hot.

Zip your lips and immediately cool down from being burning hot when you were not burning hot at all, is the only way to stop yourself and myself from exploding.

The more intelligent people are, the more difficult I find it to excuse their stupidity.

I understand that I am being unfair.

Though I actually don’t.

You may think to yourself, hello these are not real people. These are social media people. That is true.

So please meet the in person, “let me give you boring, unsolicited advice” disease people. Now here I must admit to provocation. If you tell a person that you are feeling sad, 99.9 per cent people think you are asking for a solution. And through some bizarre reasoning, no matter the cause of your sadness, most advice will follow the same pattern: Go for walks, look at nature, drink some ginger drink, try some crackpot soothing techniques, meditate and listen to my most trusted guru type.

Almost no one will tell you to do any fun things — get a new haircut, have a drink, eat chocolate, buy a lipstick. And almost no one will figure that you do not want advice. Just someone to hear you out.

I know, I know. I am not alone here. The most annoying are those who proffer the same rubbish when someone says they have terminal cancer, or some other fatal illness or life-threatening condition, or have had a debilitating accident: Drink a ginger drink, go for a walk, have a sweet sugary pill blah blah blah.

I must confess though I have learnt long ago to control my temper with the life-threatening disease advice people, because I do realise that they care and are helpless and all they have to offer is rubbish. So, if not a free pass, then some leeway. But take it from me if you are one of these advisers, no one really wants your guff. Especially if they have a life-threatening disease.

How successful have I been, you may well ask. Well. If I know you and haven’t snapped at you lately and if I don’t know and haven’t said something rude on social media in a while, then yes, I’m doing quite well. If I have succumbed, then I know, I know, I should eat ginger and look at nature. I get it.

Here’s the thing though. If I can keep my head when all about me are losing theirs, then I can get angry about what really matters. About hundreds of lives lost in a stampede during a massive religious gathering, while a heartless administration pats itself on the back for a job well done, and a shameless media are breathless about celebrity visits to the gathering.

About an ongoing genocide of thousands, as a tyrannical power amply funded and helped by Western democracies is neither stopped nor checked.

About a planet careening towards disaster, as powerful humans wonder how much more they can squeeze out of us and the Earth for more and more profit.

From the Mahakumbh to Palestine to climate change and global warming, to patriarchy to caste discrimination to religious intolerance to the collapse of democratic freedoms, there is so much to get angry about. No number of walks and no amount of ginger drinks is going to fix this anger and indeed, this sadness. Nor indeed, haircuts and lipsticks.

I’m going to keep at it then. Tolerate all the petty foolishness and save my rage, even if it’s all pointless and I’m banging my head against a brick wall. Just don’t tell me to…

O, never mind. Look at that setting sun, please. It might well be setting on my failed promises to myself!