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Tag Archives: optimism
Music Monday: Lucky
I want to see how lucky Lucky can be
I want to ride with my Angel and live shockingly
I want to drive to the edge and into the sea
I want to see how lucky Lucky can be
Yes indeed.
Bringing the Calm and Sharing the Peace
Today is a day of frustration. My body won’t do what I need it to do; my head won’t do what I need it to do.
It’s a day of frustration and unknowing and a good dose of fear.
My attention won’t do what I need it to do. It’s like buckshot; I send it out with all the focus I can muster only to have it spread out, landing on shiny and unshiny alike.
I’m frustrated due to limitation, but that will pass. I’m frustrated due to seeing otherwise intelligent people lose all reason when it comes to pride.
Pride of what?
I’m frustrated with politicians and pundits acting like three year old children, unable to discuss straight-forwardly what they are for, instead, countering and insulting their opponents. I’m frustrated with people who mistake opponents for enemies and sound bites for reasoned argument.
I’m frustrated with the celebrated repetition of falsehood: you know, the bearing false witness thing. I’m frustrated with the fact that we have lost our ability to consider the source.
Not all sources are equal.
I’m frustrated that parroting what so-and-so said or such-and-such did has become an art form, and when the parrots are confronted with contradictory data, they view facts as an assault on their character.
I’m frustrated with people who have appropriated the term “family values”: where once it meant honesty, integrity, good citizenship, and compassion, it has been reduced to “one man + one woman.”
I’m frustrated with the blame-game, this activity of (insert word here)-shaming, with finger-pointing and the utter, utter lack of accountability.
I’m frustrated with people who won’t do what I need them to do–return a phone call, fill a prescription.
I’m frustrated with myself–and it’s so much easier to find frustration with other things. I can’t seem to get a single word down about a cat I miss more than I thought I would. A cat whose timing was so precise, our evolution so cosmically timed, that her going off into the woods, ostensibly to die, coincided perfectly with my first RA flare up.
I’m frustrated.
Two strange things happened this week, both involving a single word “peace.”
Happy Independence Day
I pledge allegiance to the Flag of the United States of America, and to the Republic for which it stands, one Nation under God, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all. (1)
The word “traditional” is sticking in my craw lately, like a piece of stringy meat digging under the gum line, escaping traditional means of extrication, and requiring a DDS-licensed exorcist who comes armed with tiny, shiny traditional hooks, a traditional reclining chair and a traditional blinding light. Nevertheless, this pledge is our traditional pledge of allegiance, and often recited in honor of our traditional Fourth of July.
We’ve shortened “Independence Day” to “the Fourth,” as if it were just another day on the calendar, albeit one that creates a long weekend of fireworks, cooking out, and camaraderie, and we seem to have forgotten that this, “the Fourth,” is the day that the United States adopted the Declaration of Independence, standing apart from Great Britain and declaring itself no longer British property.
The thirteen colonies were young and brash, and so full of hope, and they created a nation that stood up and stood apart and stood firm.
We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable rights, that among these are life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness. That to secure these rights, governments are instituted among men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed. (2)
Because of these self-evident truths, we formed our own government in order to have a government we could consent to.
A government instituted with the consent of the governed.
For better or worse, whatever our political affiliation may be, We The People have consented to our government.
Lyrical Fool 