What Happened?
The Monthly Mumble

©2007

Here we are again, another year shot, done, gone, kaput, fini, outta here. Oh hell, use your own adjectives.

Now we have a nice shiny new one to screw up!

At 57 I find my self looking back to see what mistakes I made, forward to make sure I don’t repeat them.

Umm, sure. If you really believe that last part? Then I have some very fine ocean-front property for sale at bargain prices in Arizona. Cash only, the line forms to my right, deeds will be sent to you by shortly by Certified Mail.................. right after I leave for an extended vacation in Mexico.

We humans are many things, we can be noble to the point of sainthood, and craven as the most evil in history. All in the same day.

We perform miraculous deeds to save lives, and cheat on our spouses that night.

We’ve built a mighty civilization, but people starve all over the world, while the lucky few cannot stop overeating.

The best and brightest minds of our past have been induced to invent, build and test weapons of such destructive power in numbers sufficient to wipe out every living thing on this planet.

Several times over.

We’re poking around in our own genome to see if we can ‘improve’ it.

What’s worse?

We’re doing it too many other inhabitants of the mundane mudball we cling too as our lifeboat in an uncaring and dangerous universe.

Sooner or later someone in a lab is going to say ‘Oops’. And life will become the ancient Chinese Curse...”May you live in Interesting Times.”

But the most stubborn, consistent, identifiable traits we have are the most destructive. That of habitual behavior and taking the path of least resistance.

Each year about this time I make up my mind to do the right things, quit smoking, eat right, get some exercise ad infinitum.

And, I never quite get around to it, just like the overwhelming majority of the human race.

What is it about us? What tiny part of our makeup is it that controls our destiny that fails us? Ignoring the obvious to the point we live in a manner almost guaranteed to end our lives early and painfully?

Why do we so often forgo a chance to go just a little out of our way better ourselves and the world we live in?

Even something so painless as voting is dismissed as ‘more trouble than it’s worth’. Yet a single vote can change the entire Society for the better.

Often I’ve mumbled and ranted about what we have to do in insure our children’s grandchildren have a decent place to live and a dream to fill their souls. Yet we still spend precious resources foolishly, we’re still taking a massive dump on Mother Earth.

We still see daily news reports about innocent bystanders being slaughtered simply because they were in the wrong place.

We know people still die all over the world in droves from preventable disease, condemned to a slow miserable death because they are poor, or the wrong nation/tribe/color.

If it sounds as if I am not overly fond of our species, you are partially right.

But, we have enough redeeming qualities that the Powers that Be might put up with us for a while longer.

We show it in myriad ways, on Canvas as a painting that moves us to tears.

The musical instrument producing such sound as to sooth even the most savage soul.

A poem, words set in rhyme in such a way it invokes such feeling as to bring us to our knees.

A book or story that evokes the best and brightest from the depths of human souls.

The compassion we show when we pick up another injured creature and nurse it back to health, sparing no expense. Then release it, letting it free to be what it is, expecting nothing in return.

So, the cosmic scales teeter and totter, swinging one way toward annihilation, then back to preservation........... but on average, they balance.

I guess we’re worth keeping after all.

Happy New Year to all of you.