ANY LESSONS LEARNED?
(Tuesday January 1, 2013. Along the most recently paved segment of
memory lane) January 1, 2013; a day for
looking both ways at once, taking stock of where you are and possibly
contemplating making some changes in this New Year. Today is a day for hindsight as much as it is
for foresight and anticipation.
Everything feels just a bit cleaner on the first day of a New Year. The triumphs and tragedies, the good days,
bad days, sick days, holidays, birthdays, vacation days, bad hair days, the
totality of the past 366 days, all 8,784 hours of it have yet to recede to the
point they are beyond our appraisal. They
are laid out behind us in a neat, finite, block of time.
Over the last two weeks media
outlets of every ilk and reputation from the most stolid scholarly journals,
the shallow and crass newsertainment cable programs, magazines, websites,
newspapers, tabloids and blogs have presented their own versions of the best
and worst of 2012. Year in review pieces
start appearing just prior to Christmas.
Every aspect of our society, culture and the world at large is
classified, categorized, pigeon-holed, filed, sorted, and weighed by a wide
variety of metrics, calculations and a great deal of subjectivity. Some of it can be thoughtful and poignant
while the bulk of it is just so much recapping of crap. Sometimes we may lose sight of just how much
crap we are exposed to on a daily basis but scanning all the lists and the
lists of lists, and lists of lists that critique other lists we get a full
frontal assault from all the crap that serves as the cohesive force that makes
American life possible as we know it.
Yes, we are part of a wider
world, a complex sprawling global community but Americans tend to have an
acquired propensity to not look too far beyond home. There is nothing wrong with that except it is
experiencing life as an intellectual dwarf uncurious and unconcerned not only
about the far flung nations we couldn’t locate on a map if a shotgun was shoved
up our asses but we have grown ever more parochial in our view even at the
local level. So be it.
It is 2013. We have too much to do and not sufficient
time to accomplish it. We have to
multitask, text, Tweet, e-mail, download, upload and carry on our day to day
lives soaked in the cold irony that the more “connected” we have become thanks
to the social networking technology, the less connected we are to each other,
even our families. But this is our “Brave
New World” and there is no end in sight to what our sophisticated technology
will empower us to do.
But, since this is our Year in
Rear View assessment, we’ll begin with a wider gaze. We here at The Brooding Cynyx did not think
the Mayans were correct in their 2000 year old calculations but would have
liked them to be correct. After all, who
wouldn’t at least be a little bit curious about what the end of the world would
look like? No the world did not
implode on 12-12-12 but virtually every day in the last 366 some part of it was
jolted, or crumbled, or shook with turmoil, war, hunger, strife, and
conflict.
In America we learned a little
bit more about ourselves and just how horrifically broken the machinations of
our government have become. The
presidential election campaigns clearly illustrated how divided we’ve become,
how detestable our elected official are and that the gap between the haves and
have nots is increasing at light speed.
We saw approximately $4 billion spent by the various candidates for
president and Congress while being ground under the heels of a federal bureaucracy
that can’t seem to accomplish the most basic of their duties. What could be done in America with $4
billion? How many would be covered by
health insurance, how many would not be homeless or working for sub-living
wages? How many schools could we update
and neighbors could we rejuvenate? How
much of our aging, failing, fragile infrastructure could we rebuild and put the
unemployed and under employed back to work?
We got to take a good hard
look at the cold pale white underbelly of the Republican Party and were
disgusted by what we saw. We saw men
seeking to pass legislation defining various “types” of rape and learned that
some in that Party believe a women’s body has a “way of shutting that whole
thing down” if she is the victim of rape.
We all travelled into new frontiers of lunacy and bigotry as efforts to suppress
voters of a certain demographic, were buoyed as homosexual couples gained their
equal rights in more States, and argued bitterly after each mass fatality lone
gunman episode as they occurred in 2012 with an alarming frequency.
We’ve felt the sprains and
strains as our Constitution has been stretched and distorted by special
interests on both sides of the political divide and on both sides of issues
that should no longer be issues. But they
are and they are many. We’ve listened to
the people who have laid us off, cut our hours and eliminated our jobs and
afterwards we sat numb in front of the TV news reporting Wall Street earnings,
corporate bailouts, and golden parachutes.
The din became a roar as we were forced to do more with less while the
facile arguments about “redistribution” of wealth were vociferously argued by
those who never knew what it is like to go to bed hungry and cold.
Yes, the past 31,622,400
seconds comprising 2012 treated us to a veritable smorgasbord of real issues
and phony causes, of strains of apathy and complacency colliding with rabid
engagement in issue after issue.
Compromise became a curse word in Washington DC last year while in the
waning days of 2012 we were smacked with a mad dash towards a “fiscal cliff”,
whatever the hell that is.
We saw many famous people die
and mourned in private pain as we lost family members, friends, neighbors and
more innocence. Locations became
infamous and draped in the purple bunting of shared grief. A movie theater in Aurora Colorado, a factory
in Minneapolis, a Sikh Temple outside Milwaukee, and an elementary school in
Newtown Connecticut captured the national spotlight while cities like Chicago,
East St. Louis, Memphis, Oakland, and Philadelphia saw non newsworthy carnage
with each setting of the sun. We heard
reports of servicemen and women dying in Afghanistan and an Ambassador and
three others murdered in Libya while the world community sat idly as thousands
of Syrians were killed by their own government.
We tune most of this out. We feel
we have to and, after all, what can I do about it? Why should I care?
Then, of course, there are all
those other issues and arguments that have taken on a comic-tragic tone as what
is and is not the truth is kicked around.
We saw the worst drought in the Midwest since the Dust Bowl of 1936,
record breaking temperatures around the globe, powerful storms striking almost
with a malevolent conscious vengeance.
Hurricane Sandy redrew the coastlines of New Jersey and much of New York
City and Long Island and the NYC Metro area got in touch with their
vulnerability to the forces of nature overnight.
We saw and observed a great
deal of calamity, catastrophe and callous indifference but, did we learn
anything? Perhaps within the contours of
our own lives as we buried a parent or sat vigil at our child’s bedside as some
insidious disease had its way with her, or we experienced that unique aching in
our hearts and marrow of lost a love, we did learn something. Hopefully, possibly, we did. If nothing else we might have discovered a
reservoir of strength and resolves, of empathy, compassion, and humanity we’d
not been aware we possessed. Then again,
maybe we didn’t. Maybe we drifted
further from the fold and embraced loneliness and shunned solace. Whatever transpired in our lives since
January 1, 2012 are ours and ours alone to bear one way or another. That is the human condition, that’s life.
Looking outside ourselves
today we might see the last 366 days as snow plowed up into curling frozen
waves or as wind swept sand dunes piled against the glass door we just shut on
2012. We each have our own road to
travel, our own perspective, perceptions, and history, attitudes, and life
experiences to work with. That is also
part of the dynamic parcel that is the human condition.
Maybe looking back and
reflecting has value for some; for others it may be just so much wasted
time. There is tomorrow after all and we
have to carry on. But, tomorrow is guaranteed
to no one and if any lesson is more consistent and sobering as that fact of
reality, we can’t imagine it.
Our individual unique perch
provides our perspective and we can look back on 2012 and celebrate the fact
that a shitty year is over while hoping 2013 will be better or bid it a
bittersweet farewell because our life is richer for what we experienced during
the last 52 weeks. Some will make
resolutions and take the tableau rosa approach
that 2013, at least for today is a blank slate to do with what I might.
The Brooding Cynyx
wish you all the best in
Health,
Happiness,
Peace,
and contentment in
this brand New Year.
“And there was a man who stood
unsure to look over his shoulder or look ahead.
He looked behind himself for a time seeking out the boy he once was
knowing that the boy was still part of him.
He caught a glimpse of the boy and beckoned to him ;
He wanted the boy to walk with him.
Together they would go forward and enjoy each other’s company,
Teach each other lessons,
Make peace with their common past
And walk ahead onto the untrodden soil of tomorrow.”
Copyright The Brooding Cynyx 2013 © All Rights Reserved
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