"If you ever need someone to talk to, I'm right here."

That's the comment I get the most about a comic I wrote five years ago called "A Heart Made of Glass." I still get E-mail over that book. Usually people send me long letters about their own situation, about the heart they broke or their own broken heart. Almost always I have nothing to say ... it's like I'm quite aware that anything I say in reply will sound like something from those two pages of cliches in Book 2. But I am happy that my attempt at self-expression inspired others to express their own feelings as well.

The feelings of lonliness and isolation that inspired that book seem to have hit a chord with many readers. I wrote that book to try to examine those feelings, and I think in that respect, I did exactly what I wanted to do. The main question -- "Why am I so alone?" is asked throughout the book, and the answer came to be when I was near the end of book 2: "Because you want to be."

This revelation shocked me. It seems so counter-intuitive, and yet, when examined, seems so perfectly true. People's behaviours follow their needs. After a long time of being emotionally battered by other people, of relationships falling far short of expectations, of being rejected by the people I cared about, the safest place to be was alone. And because of that, I had in place behaviours that kept me away from other people. And I didn't even know it.

Rereading the book it becomes obvious. For example, when dealing with the behaviours of other people, pessamistic attitudes are prevailent. In Book 1, take for example the reasons why Kelly is late. In the dream sequence in the same book, Jon takes a conversation between two friends and uses it to justify his feelings of loneliness. It becomes a paranoia of sorts. It reaches a head in Book 2 when Jon, wanting to have sex with a girl that wants to have sex with him, manages to deftly avoid a sure thing. He seems to talk himself out of it and flee.

Jon manages to construct a world view that is cruel towards him. It justifies his feelings of loneliness and despair. When given opportunities for experiences that are contrary to this world view, he constructs a new reality that keeps the previous world view intact. Like seeing evil intent in an ordinary conversation. Or being intentionally dense, and thinking about the importance of "friendship" when "friendship" is the last thing on his mind.

But why would I want to feel lonely and desperate? Because it's safer than the risks involved with dealing with others. My behaviour followed the justifications I had to make. I became angry and bitter. And angry and bitter people aren't exactly magnets for other people.

In SL, I often wrote strips about a guy in university I knew called Ron S. He was my dead opposite in this regard. When he got rejected, he didn't care. When I got rejected, I took it entirely personal, my own feelings of self worth totally destroyed. When I was rejected, I had the posture of someone who felt they lost the Game of Life and was doomed to loneliness for all eternity. Guess who was more fun to be around.

And when I looked at AHMOG, I saw myself in the mirror for the first time. I mean, look at that guy. Would you invite him to a party? If you were a girl, would you want to have sex with him? If you were a guy, would you want to have a beer with him? And I read it, and realized that, I was doing it to myself.

The quickbook is another look at this. There's Jon, willing to do something that would really destroy his worldview, and open himself up for rejection. Unfortunately he doesn't really give it a fair chance -- any slight failure and he returns to his previous world view and probably becomes further entrenched in it. So it all hangs in the balance of a complete stranger who probably doesn't even know he's talking to her.

You know, I didn't realize ANY of this when I was writing these books.

The real lesson in AHMOG for me is not that the world is a cruel awful place (probably my original intention), but to really take a look at myself. I think everyone who is having a problem relating to the world around them should do the same. Write it down, and take a look at what you've written. Try to read what you wrote in the third person, examining it like a case study for someone else. Ask yourself these questions:

1) What is the person who wrote this doing?
2) What is their world view?
3) How are their actions maintaining this world view?

The last question is the most important. Keep in mind that there is something called a self-fulfilling prophecy -- things become true because one believes it will, and acts accordingly. When it becomes true, their beliefs become more entrenched. I'll use an example to illustrate.

1) A guy hates all women because he things they will all break up with him sooner or later.
2) He meets a girl.
3) Things are going well, but he expects that she will break up with him. This is the prophecy part.
4) Because he thinks she will leave him, he starts acting differently. Perhaps he will become paranoid, thinking that she's meeting other guys in preparation of dumping him. He becomes too anxious when she's out with her friends, worried that she will meet some other guy. He becomes suspicious and accusatory.
5) She gets tired of feeling guilty for doing nothing and dumps him.
6) He gets dumped and his world view is justified, even though through his behaviour he was the archetect of their break-up.

Can you see the cyclic nature of this? It's dangerous because it is self-feeding. A downward spiral could happen quite easily, as it had in my case.

What I would like to see instead of people E-mailing me saying "I'm just like him" is people saying "I don't want to be like him!" Oddly, not one E-mail I have read about AHMOG has ever said this. But I can understand why -- back then I wore my bitterness and anger like badges of honour, like "Only I am aware of how evil women are! The rest of you are just fooling yourselves! I have learned the truth! Look at how bitter I am!" In reality, I was saying "I am creating my own rotten life."

And that's truly the moral of AHMOG ... "I am creating my own rotten life."

And why would we do this? Why would we want to have a rotten life?

World views also involve a set of rules for viewing and interacting with the world. If we see the world as an awful place, we will have behaviours that help us navigate this awful place. A set of "rules of thumb" (e.g. the opposite sex is awful, other people will hurt you, etc) is essential for this purpose. The view and the rules of thumb go togther and support each other. They have to be conguent. And more than not, they often feed each other.

Simply put, behaviour and belief go hand in hand.

Once someone has a set of beliefs and the behaviour that go with it, it is nearly impossible to change them.

To use yet another analogy, think of trying to convert someone from their religion. They have their worldview, they have their patterns of behaviour that support their worldview, you can't do anything to change it. You can give the best evidence that there is no God, but they will still believe and they will still go to church on Sundays. It takes something monumental to change this.

Suppose you had real, unrefutable evidence that God doesn't exist. What would you expect to happen?

Likely they would be put in a panic. Their world view and the patterns of behaviour that they use to navigate that world are challenged. But what would happen is that they will do everything in their power to maintain that world view DESPITE the evidence.

This is exactly what is happening in AHMOG. Even though the portagonist is miserable, he'll do everything in his power to remain that way. He wants to BE miserable because he's comfortable that way. He acts, talks, and thinks like the world is miserable. He'll do everything to keep it that way.

And that's what I did. I made my bed of shit, and I lied in it, and was pissed at the world for smelling so bad.

All I can say is that we owe it to ourselves to create the world we want to live in. Don't hang on to bullshit like being "powerless to do anything," in many cases the chains we hold ourselves down with are the chains we put there ourselves. Good luck.