It’s Saturday morning and I am trying to stay on task, keep my train of thought from derailing and get this said. Thought, singular.
This is a second try at articulating something that has been on my mind since January 20, 2025. Something that has gotten louder and more urgent as the world that I chose to believe was real has shown it’s real truth through the attempt to force the vile and disgusting beliefs of the few onto the rest of us.
With Trump’s first administration I said out loud that his putrid behavior was giving permission to those who have always believed to take it out of their living room’s and bring it onto the streets. I was not wrong.
Now here we are on the brink of losing what Ben Franklin said, “was ours, if we could keep it.” Only about 250 years later this “experiment’ is threatened. Google says a generation is about 20-30 years. With that in mind one can say that our nation is only about 10 generations old. Maybe 30% of our historical population was THERE in the beginning?! If I am mathing correctly then all of this proves out what we all know; our nation is in it’s infancy. We are a baby nation. A baby nation that is cutting it’s teeth on each other and fighting over favorite stuffies and who gets to rule the playpen.
As an aging member of this nursery school I have been asking myself what I can, should, or want to do with what I believe to be my limited time on this side of the dirt. Don’t get me wrong. I don’t have a terminal illness or even limiting health issues. With proper care, feeding and good genes I may even make it into my 90’s; stuff my children’s nightmares are made of. But I have paid taxes, voted, contributed to society, and raised my children, I think pretty well. So, now I receive my hard earned pension and social security.
The world is a very different place now than in my youth, my child rearing years and even since I retired in 2016. Almost daily I have had to re-learn processes just to participate and it is exhausting. I have been a regular target of scammers. These days every email I get, web site I visit and contact I make leave me doubting authenticity. The amount of necessary time I have had to take to navigate all this is astounding. It’s been like a part time job. So I ask, “where is the joy?” Where is the unlimited “time” in this time of life in which I can just live and not worry? Where I can just paint, and not have to paint a protest sign. Where I can shop and not have to boycott.
This is my personal struggle. Every day I feel that more and more ugly is rearing it’s head. And I am wondering if ANY of it is really worth “saving” or if letting it all break just might be a good thing. Would I say that if I relied on government assistance to feed and cloth and keep a roof over my head? Maybe not. Am I a bad person for thinking it? Possibly. But I am thinking it. How much skin do I have in this game?
swansroost 