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.