Playing for Time

***

It’s a summer Sunday morning, only 76° and nothing to whine about. Haha, as if. The humidity is 81%, so welcome to the Eastern Kansas sauna.

My morning routine usually involves getting up by 6:30, waking up by 10:30, and spending the interim cruising through news and the most recent shenanigans. This morning while reading comments on the app formerly known as Twitter, I was struck in a fresh way by how straight and deep the dividing lines are becoming. There’s always been this side and that side, always will be, but the convo about that has become a model for AI chat, with interchangeable words and terms, and the same immutable lines firmly drawn each time. It’s a useless conversation because it changes nothing, but we keep reiterating our personal take on it as the ground under our feet crumbles and drops away.

I look for the good news every day, and it’s out there. I read the stories of people doing good things for other people, cry more often than not, and go into my day knowing there are still people trying to make life better for as many as possible. I’ve stayed in the conversation, with occasional time-outs while everybody starts to forget how annoying I am, but it might be time to simply drop out. My words don’t change anyone’s mind, and fortunately for my ego that isn’t the intention. I write to provide encouragement to people who think “I’m the only one. Nobody else feels this way.” But anyone who’s trying to tell the truth inevitably draws lines in the sand and the accompanying emotion is not one of peacefulness on either side.

I’m sensing that the default choice is to fight amongst ourselves until the lights go out and we all turn into blobs of molten clay, and then to icicles. We’re definitely a cautionary tale, and I sometimes envision the rest of the sentient universe peering at us in brokenhearted wonderment.

On another note, but likely related in some psychic sense, I amaze myself with what I can accomplish while actively avoiding some project that would contribute to the greater good, by which I mean my own peace of mind. Humans are self-sabotaging… look it up.

Once again I’ve sat here and written words and I only hope some of them meant something to somebody out there. As human life continues to decline in value, the connections we make mean everything. After about so much death and disaster, cockamamie crazy, and day after day of the incomprehensible, the planet starts to seem like a fictional place, so all we wanna know is, “Is there anybody out there who gets it? Anybody we can hang with to help make the medicine go down? Anybody still there?”

There is much we have to let go of, starting with this…

**

In a world where existential loneliness is the name of the game, I wish you at least one friend you can count on, one other heart that bonds with yours. Life is both too short and too long to be otherwise.