My Failure as a De-motivational Speaker

Saving Souls

My wife tells me I'm a saver of souls. I gripe all the time, generally prepare for all the worst scenarios, and long ago concluded that character aint destiny and stuff just happens. So I can't say I'm saving anyone, though I seem to be a bit like the character George Bailey in Frank Capra's "It's a Wonderful Life." Just when I think my life is a round of failure, indifference, and mediocrity Clarence the Angel tells me how much people appreciate everything I've done for them, or how much they love me, or how much they fancy me, or just plain how I managed to change their life for the better. It doesn't stop my nagging disappointment with my own unfathomable central position on the bell curve, but it does make me wonder what it is I said to them.I did once dive off a bridge to rescue someone drowning, which must be a sign of some ingrained character flaw. And maybe I keep diving off that bridge. I mention this because I was teaching in Singapore the other week and one of the students had a moment of tears and gratitude for me doing no more than torture them and force them to work on a silly class project I set for the group. I treated them with respect and hadn't made them feel like shit, which, given the number of people who have had similar reactions, must mean I'm a rare kind of human. Most human's apparently get their rocks off telling people how useless they are. I've had such reactions to many talks and classes I've given. It isn't as if I tell them that with hard work and talent they will triumph. Rather I tell them that most likely a career as a writer will lead them to drink, ruin their marriages, drive their children to tragic graves, and leave them in the gutter despairing at the unfairness of it all. I do on the other hand mention that you don't have to be clever to be a writer, or knowledgeable, or even literate if you're writing for film and TV, you just have to come up with engaging ideas that capture the imagination of some producer of no fixed moral compass, and you are off on a journey of endless promise and little result.At this point it has been known for women to swoon at my feet and want to, if not have my children, at least fondle parts that might be involved in the process. Sometimes the gratitude comes later on when they tell me how they've won a prize or got a movie in production or have never looked back since then because I taught them one thing, which is, the ability to say fuck 'em all I'm going to do what makes sense to me.Having set myself up as a Demotivational Speaker, I find the fact that I have motivated so many very dispiriting and further indication of my essential loser status.