10
8
5
I want to sit down and write something. Still, for some reason, I can't seem to get started. It's a trip. When I think there is something I must say in order to advance my notion that I'm doing everything I can to change a bad situation, I find myself unable to think of anything but excuses why I don't write.
They are all different and change with the wind. There is but one overriding reason I don't write. The sad truth is this. I believe if I really wrote what I'm thinking, I'll go to jail, or be put away or worse.
I dawned on me about a year ago. Not long ago I really got a chance to see behind the veneer of a human being. Frankly, I didn't like what I saw. In fact, I'm still trying to wrap my head around it.
Don't ask me what events coincided to change my basic perception of mankind, I wouldn't be able to tell you. I'm very glad that I don't have a political career (don't you hate that term? Political Career? I think of former Governor and now US Congressman Mark Sanford R-SC. This guy was with his bimbo in South America and told everyone (wife included) that he was on the Appellation Trail. Now he's back in Congress where he came from and told everyone that he asked God's forgiveness. Apparently it was OK. He's still sucking off the Government teat and allegedly getting everything he can get his hands on.) Why do these people choose a life of politics?
I can only surmise that it's better than the old 9 to 5 grind. The pay isn't bad and the benefits are good. Snazzy suits, nice dinners, important bloviating people around all the time either licking your butt or you are licking theirs, I mean it isn't always a bed of roses.
The truth is: it's all about the perceived notion of power. Sometimes there isn't any power at all. This brings me to why I don't write when I feel I should and my problems with other humans.
Maybe it's too much Face book. I really don't believe it is because I know all too well that the Democrats can lie about what someone supposedly said and do it just as well, maybe even better than the Republicans. Face book can be a pulsating mass of negative energy and can chew a person up and leave him or her in a vegetative state for weeks. I take Face book with a shaker of salt.
So what is it that has caused me to become a born-again misanthrope? Simply, most people haven't the foggiest notion of who they are, what it is that they want, and very few will admit it, even to their closest friends and family.
I am extremely lucky. I have someone in my life that listens to me, for better or worse, so to speak. Sometimes I think she just tolerates me but that's to be expected. One thing I realizes this evening was that for the first forty years of my life, I couldn't understand where all my money went. I remember feeling ashamed of myself. I just couldn't understand why I didn't have a portfolio and a sizable nest egg. It's only been recently that I realized I was one of the "working poor".
Wait... it gets better.
When I consider writing an article of late, I am dismayed by three things. The first is that the subject I wish to discuss has already been broached by three or four writers already and I feel that I really don't add much to the narrative. Years ago, the things and events I was writing about were new (to an extent, but is anything really new?) and I felt I was helping to open some eyes. I think that I've accomplished that, so why go on?
The second reason I hesitate is because the venues that publish my articles have a readership that I believe has not only caught up with my viewpoint on the World, but has actually surpassed my knowledge of how our politicians and our media distort and manipulate the truth. I feel all too often that I am doing nothing more than preaching to the choir, and that the choir in this particular instance knows more than I know.
The third reason I hesitate to write is because at this particular juncture in our history, I believe no matter what I say or how I say it, even if it is fresh and insightful, it won't make any sort of a difference in the road that our species is embarking on.
When I first started writing I was just realizing that after a 30 year intellectual coma (a hang-over from the Vietnam experience), that if people could only realize what I was realizing, that we could straighten out the mess we have put our nation and the World in. How very naive. In retrospect, I believe that the articles I've written and the thousands of articles written by others that are of a somewhat like mind have really not made much of a difference (or have they?) There was a brief period when I claimed to be a misanthrope not too long ago, I sincerely believed that our species was doomed to eradicate itself and I believed I had all the proof I need to substantiate that theory in just 3 days worth of mass media headlines.
To be sure, I don't believe that I am the only writer who feels this way from time to time. Trying to change an existing paradigm can be overwhelming, especially when I can still remember millions of people trying to stop a unjust war in Vietnam. The lack of a mass movement were briefly rekindled during the Occupy days and alas, when that movement was crushed, I only felt worse than I did had it never happened.
Comments
Click Here to View Comments or Join the Conversation