What Are We Thinking?

One’s experience of life seems to have a great deal to do with what occupies one’s thoughts. It may seem petty of me, but, along with all the horrors we have endured over the last five years under the present administration, I have also resented how much unpleasant mental real estate these subjects have taken out of my remaining years of life. Gone are the good old days when Clinton was in power. Frankly, I didn't pay much attention to the news in that window of history. President Clinton was staying up late into the night with the world’s smartest advisors and applying his brilliant mind to the issues of the day. He had it handled. For me it was like being a kid in summer knowing that the adults were taking care of things like getting food for the barbeque and making sure the pool had been cleaned while I engaged myself in loftier endeavors such as explorations on my bike and ping pong tournaments.

But the bliss of ignorance is a luxury one can no longer afford. We are once again faced with the possibly having to fight for a woman’s right to choose, of reminding people who have never seen a single dead or wounded soldier brought home from this war that real people are dying in a faraway land for reasons that have all been proven to be false, and that, all the while, we are ignoring ecological threats that may trump all of our other problems combined. Despite my wish for my thoughts to be freed up from the dreariness of these issues, I have no choice but to keep my eyes wide open and try to find some redemption in unrelenting wakefulness.