A Little Hope….


Don’t you just admire those folks who have the gift of blowing things off?

Not only will they all probably live to three score and ten, but they will never know
what it means to stare at an empty bottle of aspirin or antacid and wonder how they will make it through the night.

These are truly the blessed among our society for nothing seems to bother them.

Meanwhile, turning on the news is enough for the rest of us to start pumping stomach acid….

They just seem to float along on their own cloud of indifference. The fact that nobody does anything positive about the environment doesn’t trouble them. They’re likely to think that “it doesn’t matter what we do, we’ll still have weather. Or when you mention corruption and skullduggery at the highest level: “Heck, that’s something that’s been going on for years, pass the booze.” Or the fact that Iraq was a whole manufactured War that we had no business being involved in? “Ah, we got to show those terrorists a thing or two….”
Meanwhile, they don’t give it a second thought.

These are the 70% of the Republican party who think Bush is doing a great job; who think that the New Orleans clean-up is going well and that we really don’t need all those trees in the west. They don’t worry about water shortages, rising tides, the plight of their neighbors, or whether the kids next store will have a turkey dinner for Christmas.

As long as they get theirs!....

Floating along, they are Teflon personified. Nothing sticks to them.

They just buried the kid next store who volunteered for Iraq. “ Too bad, but I got this cuticle that gives me hell.”

Or their neighbor who beats the kids and socks his wife. “Not my problem, compadre. And if he comes to knock on the door, he will be greeted by my Smith and Wesson.”

We may laugh about such behavior until you see it up close.

And then you understand why some kids are real monsters; why the lady behind you on the automatic check-out will pick up your change if you forget it; why kids go in and shoot up their old schools.

They were never taught the right way.

Given all the talk about values and spirituality, it seems that very few really practice turning the other cheek or helping out their neighbors or doing the right thing.

I would guess these are signposts like canaries in the mine who warn us that we’d better do something before things turn worse.

We are already near the tipping point in a number of areas….and perhaps we could do worse than a little soul searching, a little reform before we go around trying to tell the rest of the world what to do….

But as my icon, Archbishop Desmond Tutu said, without hope there is nothing!

So we must hope and believe that our essential nature will come out before the final warning sounds.

And that we will resurrect our inner core, which will show us as kind and generous and thoughtful.

It is a stretch but, anyway, it’s a nice idea to cling to as we enter an Election year.


Les Aaron