[coLLege kid07]

Originally Posted by The Cloud

I honestly don't think that this is the case. Personally, I've had moments like this, and it's not laughter in the derogatory sense. Unfortunately, derogatory laughter is so ubiquitous that it is just assumed that you are laughing at somebody else's misfortune or ignorance. The laughter is generated from seeing the ego (in both others and yourself) and understanding the silliness of being so serious and caught up in this game we call life. Sometimes I'll be alone in my room and I'll bust out laughing because I'll notice myself becoming absorbed in some kind of egoic game of trying to win at life, an impossible goal.



If disrespect was intended then that's an entirely different case, but I don't think that it was. And I don't think that playing along with people's ego games, no matter how many of your bills they are paying, is beneficial to anyone. It becomes a lot harder to play a game if nobody else is participating. They are playing the game of "He is our son and he has to succeed to prove that we are good parents." They probably want him to succeed in order to validate their own egos, to feel as if everything they did in the past to help him along was the right thing to do and was not a waste of their time, because time can be wasted if the result being sought is not achieved. Without the end, the means are meaningless, by their apparent way of thinking. Maybe coLLege kid07 was just being an insufferable stubborn ass, but I don't think so. I think that he is showing them that what they are getting worked up about isn't worth popping a blood vessel in their brains over, and that they are the ones generating the suffering in this situation.

sorry kind of ignorant post...I apologize and take full responsibility of everything that has happened.