Yeah, I know, I missed an entry yesterday but it was Sunday and a day of rest…with some football thrown in as well. Bad weather day here in the once-great state of Illinois. November tornadoes just don’t seem natural.
So, what did I miss? What did you miss? Are you happy yet? Ooops, did that last week, sorry.
Here we are then, a new week with a fresh slate in front of us. Have things improved much from last week? Why am I asking so many questions? Shoot, there’s another on.
Coming up on the 50th anniversary of the Kennedy assassination and we still don’t really know the whole story do we? Not saying it’s anything beyond what is typically believed to be the straight skinny- it was Oswald and Oswald alone. Just saying there are still a good number of questions without very good answers. 50 years now.
Coming up on Thanksgiving and, for us, a family visit down south. Maybe we can ask them to come here instead. Probably be ok but there is always the unexpected when it some to family, especially in-laws. Eh?
Coming up on Christmas all too fast. When will we be able to get the outside lights hung up?
Also, when will I get the bathroom vent situation fixed; or finish putting away the lawn furniture; or drain the sticky 10% ethanol gas from the mower; or fix the grout; or get started on what I really need and want to do with the rest of my life?
All standard questions that regular people ask themselves all the time- at least similar I suppose. No time really to worry about all that’s happening in the country and the world, still I sometimes have to wonder…
If I protest or complain too much will I get flagged as a dissident? Is it now dangerous to speak up in the United States? States. United. America. It took four words to describe us; five actually…THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA.
How do you believe that the world started? Are you a Creationist or Bigbangist? Either way it didn’t seem to start perfectly- one with a beautiful garden, evil snake, bad apple, and family murder if I recall correctly; the other had a bunch of stuff, very highly compressed to say the least, just blow up and take around 15 billion years to get to today. To get to us.
Neither started perfectly and neither appears to be headed for a perfect ending either. But, for the most part we accept it for what it is and we do our little bit to make it better, or at least make it a little different in some way.
We accept it and really don’t figure it’s worth it or even possible to try to amend what has already passed. That would be foolish yes?
So why then do some folks insist on doing that with THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA? It didn’t start perfectly but was certainly a damn sight better than the other options out there at the time. And, unless I missed something in my history lessons, we have done more than a few things to make it better, to correct the original flaws.
Even if you consider the flaws to be sins there is no real way to amend the beginning. You really can’t go back again, you can’t change things and just start over without throwing out everything that happened in between; baby with the bath water as they say.
So what do you want to fix- the way we started or the way we are today? Think about it in your own life. Even if your own beginning was bad you really only have the ability to change what is in the here and now and not the there and then. You can acknowledge what has passed and focus in on what is yet to come.
As was said in a movie I believe: “You can get busy livin’ or you can get busy dyin’” Choices; decisions; again.