The Hyperion Chronicles

#94 Misery Loves Company (And Easy Listening)

A pre-Valentine’s Day thought…

I was doing some important research (well, okay, I was bored), and I made a discovery. I like the theme songs of all my favorite TV shows. This may not seem earth-shattering to you, but it got me to wondering: do I like these songs because they are great and naturally come from great shows? Or, do I like the theme songs because they are from my favorite shows, and I’m more inclined to associate the songs with positive things? Or, (and I admit this possibility is really out there), what if my favorite shows are what they are because of the great theme songs? This would make me incredibly shallow, but what if?

There is a parallel here. (And yes, I was going here the whole time, so don’t hate on my lame set-up) I have a friend, “Jackie,” who recently broke up with his girlfriend. All Jackie does now is not eat anything, sit around feeling sorry for himself and talk about how bad his life is, and listen to ultra-depressing love songs that go on about broken hearts. I tell him again and again that listening to this music exacerbates his anguish and makes him feel worse. Jackie counters that the music is a reflection of how he already feels, and it is a comfort to have someone who knows his pain. It’s the same question: does the music make his mood, or does he like the music because of his mood? I honestly don’t know. I remember when I broke up with my girlfriend I felt the same way. So, maybe it’s just a phase, a right of passage, something you have to go through. Maybe the music and the “woe-is-me” attitude are just ports in a storm—an emotional storm, but a storm nonetheless—that one goes through after this kind of heartbreak.

On the other hand, it seems sometimes like Jackie wants to be miserable. Everything he says he doesn’t want, he behaves as if he were hoping to cause said result (did you follow that? It was a tough sentence. I’ll try again). The things that she wasn’t happy about he started doing in overdrive. I told him, this will just drive her away more strongly, but he won’t listen. Or he can’t understand. Or he’s in pain. Or he wants to self-destruct; because it’s the one thing he subconsciously thinks he has control over at this point. I don’t mean to just pick on poor Jackie. The reason I can probably see this so clearly is that I have certainly been accused of seeming to self-destruct at times. We all probably have (with the exception of people from Alabama, of course. You have to actually accomplish something first to throw it away). If this theory is true, that when things are going bad we want to be miserable because it feels like the only thing we can control, then there isn’t much I can say to Jackie, or myself, or anyone, for that matter.

Of course, it still doesn’t answer the theme song question…but maybe that’s for the best.

Just a pre-Valentine’s Day thought.

Hyperion
February 12, 2003