This would be phenomenonally bad advice to give, as life will inevitably show us if we stick around enough, because however bad things are, they could always get worse. In fact, it is precisely when one tries to start and take some comfort from the idea that this is as bad as it gets, and no worse, when a whole new shitstorm is likely to be dropped upon them.

More realistically, we should encourage ourselves and others to take comfort from the fact that however bad things seem right now, we should still be fantastically thankful ... because even if you can't imagine it at the moment, trust me, things could be one whole helluva lot worse. I'm speaking from experience here, now. Even if you think that everything that could possibly go wrong already has, you'll be liable to find out they can go even wronger. Or, alternately, you will find out that there are whole other things that you'd never even considered as potentially going wrong, which were just waiting for this golden opportunity to do so.

In summation my friends, feel free to be a little disappointed when things aren't going quite as well as you would have liked, but don't kid yourself -- they're still going fucking fantastic compared to how insanely horrible they could be going. Hey, there isn't a nuclear holocaust going on outside just yet, so what the hell are you whining about?

Now I'll give, maybe there's not a lot of comfort and cheer to be taken from the harsh truth that, "Things could be a whole lot worse, ya ingrate..." I mean, even if things only kinda suck, that still kinda sucks, right?

Well, I'm here to be not at all helpful, even in the slightest: When someone's kinda down on some stuff, and you'll be fucked if you could offer anything really useful at all as a comfort, I suggest that you might quite sincerely give the most generic advice possible: "It gets better."

You can honestly tell anyone this because invariably you will be telling the truth. Nothing stays the same forever, and even if the screwed up life gets even more screwed up before it ever gets any better, the fact is that even shitty circumstances have to change eventually. Change is the only constant in life, as they say.

Now I'll grant you: You're depressed because you just lost your leg in a freak television watching incident. Unless there's some amazing new advances in medicine that we're just not aware of now just over the horizon, you're not getting that leg back. In that respect, yes, you are fucked. But, you won't always be this fucked. Eventually, for instance, you'll have to actually think about it before remembering that you used to have two legs.

Yeah, I know, cold comfort. But realistically, however horrible a tragedy is right when it happens, the human mind only has two roads to take from that point -- to eventually adjust to this change, or to go completely insane over it. Which, really, is just adjusting really really quickly. Either way, the torment can't stay just as it is indefinitely. And, far as it goes, the going totally insane over it would be in the, "It could be worse," department. But even if you choose to plummet down that way, even that downward spiral won't go on indefinitely.

So okay, even if you will eventually "get over it", things will never be quite so good as if, say, you hadn't lost your leg in a freak television watching incident. But then, that's where that stupid lemons-and-lemonade analogy comes in, right? We can't control what happens in the world, and realistically shitty things are going to happen from time to time. Sometimes we will be lucky, and sometimes we will be damned unlucky. The trick is to roll with the unlucky punches when we have to, and to giggle with childish glee when some unexpected good somehow finds its way to drop into our lap.