I first began hearing the phrase, "I don't like drama" in self-help meetings and group therapy years ago. It was a perfectly appropriate reference to a very specific kind of
trouble recovering people sometimes continued to cause their families because, though they might be recovering from their addiction, they still hadn't dealt with the
dysfunctional self-absorbtion and addiction to being the constant center of attention that they enjoyed while still using or acting out their dysfunction.

That phrase has since morphed into the catch phrase of people who do not have capacity and/or courage to engage in loving, intimate relationships with real people, who have real pain, real suffering, and who need real compassion and loving kindness to help them get back on their feet after surviving life changing, calamatous losses.

In particular, I'm speaking about a generation (those 25 and under) of emotional cripples who hide behind their cell phones and computers because they don't have the honesty or strength of character to be themselves, to stand up for what they want, or what they believe in, or to stand by who they say they love; who are even so dead inside that they don't believe in anything; who are incapable of interacting with the real world, and with real people.

As an artist, my experience has been that to engage in the world with depth, with honesty, and with true, deep, love, means to engage in the world, and it's people, with
passion. People suffer, people experience joy and pain and sorrow, and the degree of "drama" that surrounds those moments is an indication of the depth of their experience, the depth of their love. My experience has also taught me that the people who engage in the world and it's people with the most passion, the most depth, the most "drama", are those who are the least self-centered, the most courageous, the most loving.

So, the next time I meet someone who tells me they don't like drama, I'm likely to say to them, well, it's nice meeting you, but I don't like cowards.