Thursday, May 17, 2012

Serious People

Serious people always baffled me. These are the people who walk around with a frown, acting as if the entire world rested unsteadily on their shoulders. Dour is a word I always used to describe serious people; cynical with a serious bias to the negative side would be another, and grave is one of my personal favorites.




Serious people have always had a way of making me feel guilty for some reason. Perhaps it is because I never had a reason to feel very "serious" about anything. I don't mean I am frivolous or ditzy, or that I can't be hurt or feel fear. I just mean that as an eternal optimist I always look at the bright side of life, which automatically squeezes a great deal of the "serious" out.


Here is my question. What good is serious or how much good does it do? Does being "serious" about a problem mean you care more about the income of or outcome from a situation than someone with a more casual attitude would? Does taking your job seriously mean you are automatically better at it than someone with a nonchalant attitude? (Bosses sure seem to think so.) Is being "serious" about someone a good thing? Can you be happy without being serious? Can you be successful or trusted without having a "serious bone" in your body?


Serious is associated with a sign of maturity. Nobody expects kids to be serious. Most people around the world seem to think that a person’s chronological age makes all the difference and as soon as we become adults by law we should become serious about life. It didn't work that way for me. I refused to “grow” up or develop a serious side.


I could never see very far into the future and therefore never saw any reason not to have fun and enjoy whatever I was doing in the present. Some people say "grow a frown", get some worry lines going on and begin to act your age. Having fun and playing are inconsistent with getting serious about life and being responsible. Wipe that smile off your face!


I never felt like I was shouldering more than I could carry and therefore I never felt the weight of the world pressing down on me. I don't mean to suggest I never carried any weight; I ran businesses and had many employees. I just carried the weight with a good attitude so the weight was never hard to bear. I never ran into a problem which couldn’t be better solved with a smile than a frown. I never ran into a situation where a more serious attitude would have improved or affected the outcome one way or another.


So I traded in the worry lines I earned in life for laugh lines and learned to fake being serious, as befitted my station in life. But inside I never grew a serious bone. As I grew older I accumulated some serious baggage but I kept it in the trunk. Sh*t happens but I never saw any reason to allow the bitter ugly in life to ruin my upbeat disposition.


Serious has a place in life, no doubt. It reinforces lessons we need to learn. We should take learning seriously. We should take love and family seriously. But to become a serious person would be entirely too serious a thing for me to do.


Author's note: I wrote this blog in part to encourage people to lighten up a little. I also wrote this blog because many people who have read my blogs have asked how to attract more traffic to their sites. This blog is an example of SEO, otherwise known as search engine optimization.


As you can clearly see, I sprinkled the word serious all over this blog. In no time at all this blog will show up on the front page, if not in the number one position, for the search word “serious”. (At least I think it will. :) To increase your page rank pick a word that relates to what you are trying to sell or say and paste it all over your blog or website. Do this in an intelligent manner, not in nonsense sentences, and the search engines will love you.




At least, that is the theory. Keep an eye on "serious" over the next few weeks to see my results.
PS: And please spread this blog around! :):)

No comments: