In case you’ve been living under a rock for the past day or so you know by now that a team of Navy SEALs has killed Osama bin Laden… eh who am I kidding, even if you were living under a rock, you’d probably still have your phone with you so you could tweet about living under said rock, so everyone should know this by now. 

So what was your first reaction? 

Was it something along the line of this:  “Wow, that’s awesome news!”

Or was it something along the line of this: “Grumble Grumble Grumble... [insert random negative comment and/or reason as to why nobody should be even slightly happy about this news]”

I don’t know many people who believe that this occurrence solved any of the major issues at hand in today’s world.  I’m sure there are some naïve people out there who do believe this, but we’ll ignore that particular fact for the purposes of this post.

What it did or did not “solve” is not the point.  The point is, why can’t people just revel in this moment, if only for a short period of time?   Why do people have to instantly form conspiracy theories or focus on how it will affect political approval ratings or discount this accomplishment by calling it meaningless?

It seems that we as a species are experts at finding the dark cloud on even the brightest and sunniest days.  

You know the story of when Jesus fed those thousands of  people with 5 loaves and 2 fishes?  Well I have it on good authority that on that day, the following conversations could be overheard (if you don’t know the story, in a nutshell,  rumor has it that Jesus fed a crowd of thousands with 5 loaves of bread and 2 fishes by miraculously dividing them up to create baskets and baskets full of food - and yes the story calls them "fishes" and not "fish"):

• Crowd member  1:  Dammit, I’m allergic to seafood.  Couldn’t he have miraculously produced some chicken or something instead?
• Crowd member 2:  Holy shit, this bread is dry.  I’m PARCHED.  Why couldn’t he have done that ‘water into wine’ miracle instead???    
  
• Crowd member 3: I never saw him wash his hands before he manhandled all the food.  I’m not eating this bacteria-laden slop.
• Crowd member 4: Yeah, it was miraculous and all, but I heard that his approval ratings have been down in the toilet lately and I KNOW he just did this to up his ratings.  There’s no way anyone could be that altruistic.  He’s acting like he thinks he’s the new messiah or something.
• Crowd member 5: Eh, it’s nice and all, but we’re just going to be hungry again tomorrow.  There’s still a world hunger problem out there, you know.  He should have just let everyone starve.  
• Crowd member 6:  Did anyone ever check under his robe?  And did anyone actually watch him closely when he was performing this “miracle”?
•  Crowd member 7:  I wasn’t really that hungry to begin with and all these people look fairly well fed.  Why couldn’t he focus his attention on solving some other problem, like smiting adulterers or something?

I shit you not, those are actual snippets of conversation from that day.  I know someone who knows someone who has a friend named Al who’s great grandfather to the 25^th power was there that day. 

Anyway, I guess the thing is that any day that an evil evil human being is removed from the face of the earth has to be a kinda somewhat OK day, doesn’t it?

We can bitch about all the things it did or did not accomplish tomorrow, but for today why can’t we just be glad that it happened?

Because our species sucks.  That's why.

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