It just seems to keep coming.  Once I get it cleared off then it comes again, even when the temperature is so low as to make it a somewhat rarer option.  I shovel, it snows, I shovel again.

Sometimes other things in life seem to go this way as well don’t they?

I work, I get the job done, more stuff comes my way.  If I’m lucky and like my job then it’s not so bad, maybe even a good thing.  Regardless, still it comes.  I work, I shovel.

I try to teach my kids all the things I consider to be good, to be right.  Just when I think that they have it down I find that the old ways have crept back in.  So I work again, I teach and re-teach.   I shovel again.  I put my back and legs into it.

There are New Year’s resolutions that I plan to make, to change me, to change my life.  That is the plan anyhow.  That has always been the plan.  I make the resolutions and I manage to keep a few, for a while anyhow.  Then the lesser angels of my human nature creep back on to the scene so I need to regroup and recommit myself to getting to where I wish to go.

A series of unfortunate or even bad events sometimes manages to greet us.  If you have lived a few years already and look back over that life of yours you will likely be able to identify several such streaks- the good ones aren’t always so obvious to spot.  You get knocked down, you get up again, you get knocked down again.  You get up because you know things will get better.  You get up because you are so sure that things can’t get worse.  You get up because of who you are and what you believe in.  You get up and try like hell to not get knocked down again.  Not today anyway.

I look out the window- it looks like it’s getting ready to start snowing again.  I am ready to head out again later.  My hands are still a bit numb from before and, yes, I did wear a good pair of gloves.  I have two shovels at the ready, I have two arms and two legs.  I am ready.

Like cleaning the house as well.  You clean it, it gets dirty again, you clean it again.

Springtime comes, the snows melt, the waters rise, my basement floods again.  I pump out the water and mop up the mess; I replace all that has been damaged; I get ready to do it all over again as much and as often as needed.

On an on and on it goes.

I pay my bills and new ones come.  Generally, unless I do something to address them, they grow larger.  Larger bills, new and greater taxes.

The bills are for things I voluntarily agreed to pay for- a service or commodity or something else I needed or otherwise wished to have.  My choice, though sometimes not seemingly so.  I could try to live without electricity or heat or running water or trash service or a telephone or petro for my car…  But I choose to have these things to provide for the welfare of the family that I chose to start along with the woman who agreed to marry me.  Nothing has been forced, I have had free and honest choices all along the way.

I dutifully pay my taxes but are they an expense I chose to have?  Did I have much of a say in the services they claim to provide, the general welfare they seek to distribute?  Can I choose where my taken dollars go?  Am I able to send my children to a school of our choosing without having to pay a private fee to do otherwise?  Do I have a vote in the pensions and perqs provided to our local public employees?  Can I fire a teacher who fails my kids?  How much input and control do I even have?   Answer is…not much.

In a free market if I don’t like the services or products provided by a company I can take my business to another company, a competitor.  If the taxes I pay locally are too onerous or I just don’t like them then I can move to another village or county or state provided I can sell my house, get another job, and so on.  I am somewhat locked into place and hope that the so-called authorities are reasonable- they need to be to a degree if they hope to draw new residents and businesses in.   Until it doesn’t matter anymore- like when all the tax revenues they receive are doled out from the central authority.   

Where can I go to escape the federal government though?  I can’t really even express my positions, my opinions, in any fashion other than electing some new representative and hope that  he or she can somehow manage to coalesce a group of like-minded colleagues and then get a bill together and up for a vote and then hope they can get it passed in the House and also then through the Senate.  And then hope it does not get vetoed.  And sometime later it may become law and trickle on back to me.  If I’m lucky and live long enough.

Nope.  Once things get established it is so hard to get them changed, to go back to where things were or should be.  It is a slight tug against an earlier and much bolder yank.  Who winds up gaining the greater amount of ground?  And, in the end, who pays for it?  Is there even a way to pay as all of our debts pile up higher and higher still with each passing winter? 

It snows, I shovel, it snows again.  If I have any energy left I shovel again…but still it snows and snows and snows.  Each time I have to throw the snow up higher and farther.  Soon it will pile up so high that there will be no place to throw it any longer.  We will not be able to shovel any longer.

And then, we’ll all get snowed in.