We are always getting ready to live but never living. — Ralph Waldo Emerson
Plenty of events make living a frightening proposition. Whether to hide or stand is up to you.
One of the first things to greet me this morning, besides three very hungry cats, was this story from the Associated Press about Nigerian terrorist group Boko Haram burning a village, killing 86 people including children. A survivor, hiding in a tree, said he could hear the children screaming as they died in the flames. A triple bombing claimed by Daesh killed 45 in Damascus.
Business Insider reports that nine US citizens are among 33 people being held by Saudi Arabia on terrorism charges. There are no fewer than five different stories this morning detailing the precarious state of the global economy, especially in China where people are beginning to sneak large amounts of cash out of the country. Britain’s largest lender has imposed a hiring and pay freeze amid economic concerns. Tensions between China and the US continue to mount in the South China Sea.
Meanwhile, everyone living in the Midwest is bracing for severe storms that threaten blizzards in the North and West and severe thunderstorms in the South and East. At the same time, all eyes are on Iowa today as people there caucus in the first official act of the 2016 presidential election. The outcome of today’s vote could seriously impact who is still running tomorrow.
No one ever said that living is easy; we don’t expect it to be so. At the same time, however, no one told us that living was going to be so incredibly frightening. Even as I’m sitting here writing, Kat read to me a story of a man who, fearing that there might be a shooter at the movie theater, carried his own weapon to the show, whereupon he accidentally shot another person in the shoulder. Even when fleeing our fears, living is fraught with danger.
Add to everything else the fact that this is a Monday and one might question whether it is even safe to get out of bed.
All my life, and probably all of yours, we have been told we should be living our lives to the fullest. While that platitude sounds good, how we define a “full” life is a matter of great subjectivity and the nature of one’s pursuit of that “full” life can introduce one to some rather severe circumstances threatening your very existence, not to mention severely diminishing how “full” one’s state of living might be.
For example, I know some truly wonderful, giving people who have dedicated their lives to helping better the living conditions of people in third world countries. While the lack of basic resources makes those situations difficult, they feel their lives are fulfilled in helping others. What we’ve seen in recent years, however, is that terrorist groups, specifically Boko Haram, targeting NGOs and aid workers with bombs and brutal killings. Terrorists are only able to control out of fear and the preventing anyone from providing help or assistance keeps that fear level high. Just wanting to help people can make one a target.
Even people who are simply trying to eke out a modest living and prepare for old age with moderate investments have reason to fear. China arrested 21 people in a $7.6 billion Ponzi scheme this morning. US investors, again mostly individuals saving for retirement, have been victims of similar schemes as well, such as the Bernie Madoff scheme uncovered a couple of years ago.
I realize that this is typically the point in the article where I’m supposed to offer encouragement, give a “go-get-em” conclusion that encourages everyone to stand up, take the bull by the horns, stare down the serpent, and claim dominance over one’s life. I’m not going to do that this morning, though, because it’s just not realistic. There are things in and around our lives which we legitimately need to fear. Everything does not work out for good. Life is not a bowl of cherries nor a box of chocolates. Sorry, but sometimes all we get is a box of rocks.
Yes, we need to respond to life’s dangers with determination and aggressive action. Cowering in a corner doesn’t help matters at all. But it’s difficult to stand up and face an enemy one can’t see coming, and for many of the dangers we face there’s no advance warning system. When one gets on an airplane, there can be no absolute guarantee that it won’t blow up somewhere over Michigan. While the odds are in your favor, the danger is still there and there’s not a lot, if anything, one can do to prevent whatever is going to happen. Winter storm Kayla? Yeah, go ahead and “stand up” to that blizzard. Buy all the milk and bread. That won’t stop the snow and the wind.
Living is frightening. Dangers are real. The best I can offer is to be your friend as we face the challenges together. Maybe we’ll make it, maybe we won’t. Either way, know that we’ll always be for you.
Good luck, and good living.
Sleeping Through Sunday
I have never taken any exercise, except sleeping and resting, and I never intend to take any.—Mark Twain
None of us are sleeping as much as we should. Going back to bed may be the healthiest thing you do
I would dearly love to be sleeping right now, truly I would. Unfortunately, my body has conditioned itself to wake up at this ungodly hour, while everyone else is still sleeping, so that I can actually get some work done before the world starts getting noisy. As a result, to sleep even past 6:00 AM is a luxury rarely afforded these days. I’m not the only one, though. For the past four years, doctors have been warning that we’re not sleeping enough. Cases of insomnia are on the rise. Sure, there are sleeping pills that help some, but those also bring the chance of abuse and, in some cases, addiction. The problem isn’t just limited to the US, either. The whole world is having trouble sleeping.
What causes us to have so much trouble falling asleep and staying that way? There are a number of issues, of course, but the three most common to our contemporary first-world lifestyles are:
That third one, of course, is new, and largely limited to people in industrialized nations. In places where 24-hour wifi isn’t quite so prevalent, concerns over personal/family safety take the third spot, which is certainly understandable. In the US, especially, we have a problem putting down our phones even to sleep. Whether it’s playing some silly game, browsing the latest cat memes, or actually reading something worthwhile, we rarely turn off our phones. Making matters worse, recent studies indicate that the light emitted by our phones is bright enough that our brains mistake it for daylight so that the little trigger telling us to go to sleep gets turned off.
Such insomnia is not totally new. Throughout the twentieth century, there were plenty of things keeping our parents and grandparents awake at night. In the early part of that century, we feared becoming involved in a European war, so much so that we were almost too late to help, Then came the Great Depression and I’m not sure anyone slept much. Homelessness, poverty, unemployment, and hunger all have a way of keeping a person up at night. Then, from 1936 on, the threat of a second European war became a worry and those who remembered the first one were especially sleepless. The 1940s were a decade of war and no one sleeps well through that. Troops were back home for most of the 1950s, but the Cold War set in hard and the Red Scare had Americans wondering whether their neighbors and co-workers might be communists. Air raid drills were common in schools, making sure children didn’t sleep well, either.
By the 1960s, parents worried about war in Southeast Asia, violence around the growing Civil Rights movement, and an exploding drug problem. 1972 crushed our faith in government. 1974 introduced us to the worries of inflation. By 1979, we looked at the Middle East as our newest enemy and worried how to keep them in check. Fear of nuclear annihilation reached its peak in the 80s and we responded to any and every threat by attempting to outlaw it, sending more people to jail than the prison system could handle, most for non-violent offenses. By the 90s economics were again a major fear and this thing called the Internet threatened to change the very fabric of our society.
Society is too complex for us to not find things to worry about. My current personal list of immediate concerns is about 20 items deep, and that’s with me trying to be positive. I refuse to be pollyannish and say everything’s going to be alright. The fact that we’re not sleeping like we should is itself a warning that no, everything may yet go to hell in a handbasket.
So, why are we not sleeping through Sundays, every Sunday? I challenged my father on the topic more than once. If one is going to actually believe Old Testament mythology regarding creation, then one has to deal with the notion that, after six days of work, God rested. Throughout the Old Testament, he seemed rather adamant about that whole resting thing and to this day devout Jews struggle with the juxtaposition of secular demands to do things and their religious commandment to not do things on the Sabbath. Spending all day at church seems to me, still, as just as much a violation of that command as if one were working. One does not rest at church, at least, you’re not supposed to actually sleep through the whole thing. My father was never amused, nor moved, by that argument, though.
To me, it just makes good sense. Our bodies, and our minds, need a break. We fill our lives with so very much the other six days, we need a respite to allow our bodies to catch up, re-energize, and recuperate. We need scheduled time to laugh, to read fiction, to have pleasant conversations, to enjoy non-stressed company of friends who don’t care if the house is clean, to ponder, to appreciate. More than anything, we need to be sleeping.
Go back to bed. Chores can wait. Ducktape kids to the wall if necessary. You should be sleeping. Get to it.
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