If everybody you love is in trouble, are you okay?
I have been giving this question a great deal of thought lately. The answer seems like the solution to at least one puzzle of the human condition. I am fine. But there is death, unemployment, illness. Now – speaking personally – I am alive, comfortably retired and as healthy as an old battered athlete can be. But I can’t help feeling somewhat sad about the trials and tribulations of some loved ones. I wish life was easier for them. I truly do.
Wrote those lines five years ago. Then segued into my mother’s eleventh knee operation, fifteen weeks in re-hab. She hoped her new knee would be good for “at least two or three years.” As was she. Winning bingo games right up til the end.
The front page of that day’s newspaper proclaims JOBLESS ARE IN THE CROSSHAIRS To pay for a tax cut for businesses, A House bill would cut benefits. Florida – The Banana Republic of the USA – already ranks 46th among the 50 states re the most anybody can receive at $275 a week. Only 23% of the state’s unemployed even receive benefits currently. It’s already more than twice as difficult to even qualify here.
The rich and the powerful are doing just fine, I might add. Better than ever, actually.
If people you don’t know are in grave danger, are you safe? Perturbed by the state news, I turn on MSNBC and, lo and behold, there’s live footage from Japan as a Tsunami of biblical proportions washes away countless lives and billions of dollars.
A lost internet connection? You ran out of beer? Boss won’t give you the day off? Puhleeeze.
The next time you are feeling low, down on how tough your life is, take a look around you. A long look. A distant look.
The word “Aleppo” works for me right now. That and a line from Unbroken – A full bowl of seaweed is better than a half bowl of seaweed.
Have you ever been hungry?
Put your problems in perspective and – more often than not – they won’t really seem like problems. A traffic bump perhaps for today, but nothing upon which to squander energy.
Save yourself. Surf the tsunami.
