This makes me mad

You get a bit of this if you live in Europe. A lot of people in N. America still think Europe is some amazing magic place like Narnia where the animals can talk and you can breathe under water and all you do all day is eat ice cream and drink champagne and swan around on yachts with beautiful women.

Yeah, it's a bit like that if you're here on holiday.

If you live here, it's a place where you work, commute, go grocery shopping and take out the trash exactly like everywhere else in the world... oh, except the people are all weird, you often can't get the things you're used to or go to the movies, the rules are totally different and everyone speaks another language. You can't, in other words, live a normal life... which can be a little hard to take if you have to do it for five or six years. There's a reason ex-pats have much higher rates of stress-related illness than the general population.

But I guess people don't think much about this. They're too busy being envious in the commbox.

John Sonnen, of the ridiculously popular and famous Orbis Catholicus Secundus photo blog, that gets about 3000 hits a day, has had his camera stolen while in Madrid. If you had paid me a million bucks I wouldn't have gone to World Youth Day, (well, I might have said I would, taken your money and then gone off somewhere very very quiet and solitary to spend it), but John has gone to Madrid to shepherd around a bunch of screaming teenagers... for free.

In return for this, some bastard waiter has stolen his camera, the fabulous camera that was donated to him by a kind friend in the States so he could keep blogging. He has put up a post asking if there is anyone out there who might be willing to buy him a new one.

Naturally, someone without enough imagination to live an interesting life of his own has decided to be a jerk about it in the commbox...

Anonymous said...

You are a grown, married man and you always requesting money when life throws you a curve ball. Why don't you save your own money and buy your own camera when you have enough to do so? What makes you feel entitled to ask people to send you hard earned money in this economy to assist you whenever some problem comes up or you need extra money? It's not dignified. Most people don't get to travel to Spain, Russia, Poland, England, France in a life time, yet poor man that you are has been to these places numerous times. Seems like you are doing pretty good to me.

I am so mad at this idiot that I am posting my response just in case John, who is much nicer than I, decides not to post it.

Oh, and hey Jerkface "Anonymous"!

John works his ass off all year as a tour guide in Rome, which is incredibly hard work, as well as keeping up his studies. He does this blog as a happy hobby and as a serious apostolate that is appreciated by as many as 3000 people a day. It's positive. It's uplifting. It's Catholic-friendly and a needed response to people like me who are always talking about how awful the world is.

John only had that camera because a kind reader, fan and friend who could afford it, bought it for him so he could carry on with this work that is such a help to others. He can't possibly afford to replace it.

Also, as a person who has never been to Europe, you obviously don't know that it costs next to nothing to fly/train and or/boat around Europe. The ferry fare to Tunis for example, (when it was a place anyone wanted to go) is about 25 Euros. It's incredibly expensive to fly across the Atlantic, but once you're here, it can be as little as 10 Euros to go to places like Dublin, Paris, London, etc. Everyone, and I mean EVERYone in Europe flies all over the place all the freaking time. You know why? Because it's ridiculously tiny. I could walk to Austria from here in a few days. If you can stay with friends or friends of friends, you can travel around Europe all you like for no more than it would cost to commute from the burbs to your crappy down-town North American city job for a week.

The other way he, and any one of the rest of us who wants to, gets to go places is because other people are kind and good, friendly and helpful and want to see other people having a nice time.

Envy is an ugly sin, mate. It's the only one that Thomas Aquinas said creates misery for those who indulge in it and gives absolutely nothing in return.

I'm sorry if your crap life sucks and you hate North America and have never been anywhere. But you know what? It's not that hard really, you just have to buy a ticket and go.

Oh, and on top of that, it helps a lot if you are a decent soul who's nice enough and friendly enough for other people to want to be nice to back.

So, sucks to be you, I guess.

(And hey, way to be a manly man there, lobbing insults and vitriol behind anonymity.)

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