Wednesday, January 01, 2025
Don’t look back, look forward. I know that’s not easy when every media source is doing ‘year in review’ stories all over the place, but 2024 is dead. I’m not sure it deserves a proper burial. Just toss it in a ditch and move on because the trouble it caused stays with us long after it’s gone.
We don’t need resolutions today, either. We need a re-commitment to ourselves and the people and things we love. I started this morning by cleaning around Frankie, the smashed-face wheezer kitty’s bad eye. I played peek-a-boo with Hamilton for several minutes. Bit is nuzzling my hands as I type, purring loudly. I’m on my third cup of coffee, drinking it slowly, enjoying the taste. These are some of the things that matter.
Kat sent back pictures of the little cabin she’s staying in; it’s nicely appointed with a huge picture window looking out onto the woods. Perhaps she’ll see some wild turkeys or even a deer or two. She handles the cold better than most people, so she’s planning on doing a little hiking around the cabin, enjoying the time to herself, and the quiet.
G stayed up with me until midnight. I looked in on him at one point during the evening to find him studying schoolwork. He’s not happy with his GPA, or all the gunfire in our neighborhood. Tipper ignored both of us last night but was up early talking on the phone with a friend.
Perhaps our lives aren’t as exciting as others. We’re not jetting off to some exotic location, running marathons, or attending parties. I only left the yard once during the entire month of December. We take our meds, keep our heads down, and focus on staying alive. Considering all the options, that seems to be the best approach to the new year.
There are three news stories this morning that I find concerning. The first is the tragedy of a car driving into a group of revelers in New Orleans. At least ten are dead and 30 people injured. No one has any details yet, no idea of what motivated the attack. Around the world, driving vehicles into large groups of people has become an easy form of terrorism. There’s no good way to stop it from happening. Even staying inside holds no guarantees. This is the way 2025 is starting, not from an attack by a foreign agency, but from ourselves, our neighbors.
Hidden within the many folds of today’s New York Times is a careful story about the large cache of bombs the FBI has discovered at a Virginia farm. This is the largest collection of non-military explosives the agency has uncovered in its history. Most of the explosives were fashioned as pipe bombs, some marked ‘lethal’ and others with the hashtag #nolivesmatter. With the hashtag comes a threat from what has, until now, been a mentally deficient shadow group of far-right ideologies that “historically encouraged members to engage in self-harm and animal abuse,” according to a threat assessment released in August by the New Jersey Office of Homeland Security and Preparedness. Again, these are not foreign players. They call themselves patriots, forcing us to question the motives of anyone who claims that title for themselves. The person in custody even blew off three of his own fingers while making the bombs but was undeterred in his mission. You are right to be bothered. The FBI found one, but there are many others.
Chief Justice John Roberts issued his annual report and his words are alarming. The judiciary is under attack. Threats against federal courts and justices have tripled over the last decade. As more political cases are thrust into federal courts, more people, especially politicians, are dissatisfied with the results. “It is not in the nature of judicial work to make everyone happy,” he wrote. He’s also concerned about “elected officials” who blatantly disregard court rulings. No, he didn’t mention anyone by name, but everyone knows that was a warning to the incoming administration.
Put those three stories together and you have the makings for a very rough year. In one way or another, we are all targets. Yet, there’s little we can do besides going on about our lives as if nothing’s wrong. So, tell people you love them even if it’s awkward. Be kind where you can but don’t tolerate stupidity. Perhaps consider investing in some Kevlar.
Happy New Year.
Thursday, January 02, 2025
The Senselessness Of Existing
So, this is how we’re going to start the new year? Are you dead sure this is what you want: hate, fear, fury, anger, depression, helplessness, and loss? Or is it a severe bout of stupidity, ignorance, brain rot, selfishness, emotional malignancy, miseducation, and deprivation? I’m done asking ‘why’ because that question is irrelevant–it doesn’t matter. There’s no point in questioning the motives behind actions fueled by an unconscionable lack of humanity. There is no reasoning behind the disregard for life. No one wants to play this game if you’re just going to overturn the board and fling the pieces around the room.
I woke around 3:30 this morning with the sensation of pain pushing its way through my head. Sure, I’ve had a severe headache for more than two months now, but this was a new, different direction in what feels like an assault at the atomic level. Whether it’s the cancer, the diabetes, the hypertension, or some yet unnamed malady makes no difference. Pain is a permanent part of my reality and the most critical thought I have today is in choosing how I am going to respond, not because it will ease my suffering, but because I have no right to let the pain in my body infringe on the happiness of anyone else.
When I inquired of Tipper this morning as to whether she has any immediate needs, she responded with a request for winter boots, something that will keep her feet dry, size 91/2. As soon as I finish here I will place the order for those boots. Can I afford them? Probably not, but that’s my problem, not hers. Taking care of her needs, of G’s needs, is not my ‘job,’ it is the obligation of conscience that comes with being a parent. I do not exist, none of us exist, to make myself/ourselves comfortable. We exist to participate in and perpetuate the harmony of humanity. When we fail in that task, as we do now, lives outside our own become fractured. What right have we to become the destroyer of someone else’s world?
Step back and look at where we are. An aspiring nurse, a football star, a single mother, and a father of 2 were among those killed in yesterday’s New Orleans attack. Firework mortars and gas canisters were stuffed inside a Tesla that exploded outside Trump’s Las Vegas hotel. 10 people were wounded in a shooting outside a New York City nightclub. Montenegro mourns after gunman killed at least 12 people before shooting himself. All of this occurred within a single twenty-four-hour period. Willful destruction of people’s lives, something that no one has a right or obligation to commit. The shedding of tears, the cries of pain, and the agony of innocent lives lost is not only on the hands of those who pulled the triggers or detonated the bombs but on all who failed to teach compassion, understanding, cooperation, and the individual role in all of humanity.
Let’s be very clear: you do not have a need, the responsibility, or the right to ‘fix’ anyone but yourself. Making America, Canada, Mexico, China, or anywhere else ‘great’ is not accomplished by interfering with the rights of another person, especially their right to exist in the space where they are. If you want to make your country better, regardless of which one it is, you have to own the fact that you are part of the problem. What makes a country great is not a shared ideology but a full-body commitment to community, to caring, to helping, to learning, and to making the lives of others better than when you first met them. That goal is never achieved through violence, hate, fearmongering, belittling, bullying, or force of any kind. We have to give other people the space, the resources, and the support to be who they are, not who we want them to be.
I was outside with the dogs yesterday afternoon when Hamilton alerted on activity taking place several houses to our South. With Ham’s first bark, Belvedere came running at full speed. I looked to see what had them concerned. A man was screaming as he exited the house, “You just can’t let other people be happy, can you?” He repeated the question several times as he tossed his belongings in the car and left with his partner. The occupants of the house he left have a history of domestic violence. Police have been called multiple times over the years. When one person attempts to force their will on others, no matter how well-intentioned, they do damage, and create fear, loathing, and frustration for the other person.
Leaving a situation where one is being harmed is only a partial solution, though. When one leaves, they take with them the emotions heaped upon them. What are they supposed to do with that burden? Too many times it ends up being turned on someone else, someone who is not part of the problem, someone who happened to be in the wrong place at the wrong time.
Early this morning, two people arrived at the emergency room of a local hospital sporting fresh gunshot wounds. They had been shot while on the Interstate. Police do not yet know if the victims knew the shooter or had any other interaction with them. Maybe they didn’t signal when changing lanes. Maybe they cut off another vehicle. Why doesn’t matter. No one had the right to shoot them, to damage their lives in ways that would be manifested for the rest of their existence.
God didn’t create hell nor does any deity send one to such a place. We create hell ourselves every time we fail to care about the lives of other people. Hell is not a threat for after one dies; hell is here, now, in the absence of compassion, understanding, and failure to hold oneself responsible for the obligations of participating in humanity. Hell is the absence of reason and the embrace of chaos. Hell is the ascension of one’s self over others. Hell is the imposition of one’s will, ideology, or religion upon people who are fully capable of thinking and acting for themselves.
Jesus doesn’t save, but you can. Humanity has existed on this planet somewhere between 50,000 and 100,000 years (depending on how one defines ‘human.’). Not once has Jesus deflected a bullet. Not once has Mohammed shielded anyone from a bomb. Not once has any deity stepped in to stop a war. If we want those things to happen, we have to do them ourselves, for each other. We are the force that makes a difference in this world. Whether that force is used for good or evil is an individual decision that we make every second of our lives. We determine who lives and who dies, who’s happy and who’s sad.
Take inventory of yourself today, pluses and minuses. Start with the list of things you’re doing well, the positives in your life, what you’re addressing to your own benefit, the things you’re learning, and the ways you’re helping others. Then, take an honest look at where you’re doing harm, whether it’s to yourself or someone else. Where are you willfully being ignorant? Where are you misplacing your trust? Who are you following that is misleading you? If that side of the list isn’t as long as the other, try again.
Frankie, the smashed-face wheezer kitty, just jumped onto my desk. He likes having his chin scratched. It takes three seconds of my time to make his life better. It might take a little longer to find Tipper some good winter boots, but the effort is worth making her life better.
If the world we live in is a bad, scary, and dangerous place, it’s because we made it that way.
Do better.
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