My X is leaving for Kuwait on Monday. Most of you know that he and I are still good friends. I get sad about this whole mess of a world we live on. Time goes on, the wounds grow deeper, we trust our neighbor less, the ten commandments mean so little these days. Those of you who know me, know that I am not big on organized religion, but I do believe in morality and the idea of doing to others as you would have done to yourself.
Priorities often seem shifted. The other day, I came home from breakfast with Mark and my children and my street was flooded with cop cars and the cops all had rifles and these police officers were just running up and down my street, in front of my house with their rifles. It was a bit disturbing. Turns out the guy a couple houses away shot himself. This happened on my street where I live with my children. So much seems uncomfortable in our neighborhoods and in our schools and most of us are broke and the economy sucks, so we are out there killing eachother and stealing from eachother and screwing eachother over and many of us do not know our neighbors and would not say hello to a stranger on a street corner and countries are at war and the wounds keep getting bigger and the population grows as science discovers new ways to make us live longer and make more babies (conceived in a test tube in our Brave New World). What are we accomplishing? And what is our choice? And how do we change this? How do we get out of this tornado of distrust and lack of faith in people and an ever increasing population of creatures who were given the ability to think. With the ability to think comes differences of opinion. And the biggest flaw of our species seems to be that we often dislike or even hate others for no other reason than these differences. Centuries have gone by and this fact has not changed. All that has changed is our numbers, increasing the energy behind the hatred and the ability to inflict larger wounds. It was very cool when America seemed to suddenly gain a great deal of spirit after september 11th, but where is it now? Maybe it was us showing our teeth and flashing our colors. Was this spirit fueled mainly by anger and hate? When was the last time you said hello to a stranger on the street corner? I know there are many who can say it was just this week or even yesterday, but I would be curious to see the statistics of how many have a habit of walking by without as much as a smile. I mean, it has been over a year since September 11th and everyone is really busy trying to get by and deal with their own lives, right? We just do not have the time, right? And our country is in all of this debt and the poor get poorer. And eviction rates are at a record high (I read that today). Many people are incapable of finding work and struggle to feed their families. And we spend how much money each year trying to figure out ways to keep people alive longer?
Do we have a goal? Can we even get out of debt as a nation? Can we slow down for a second and realize we are on the same team? Can we stop being so greedy and selfish and prejudice before we completely do ourselves in?