Tag: Alex Jones

Shot Down

I wish I was spiritually evolved enough to roll with life’s punches and “see the lesson” in them as they hit. I am not. I ruminate more than I should over woundings and insults whether they are hurled intentionally or not.

The house build behind us is moving forward. I did everything I could to intervene and stop it. I stalled it by a month but my overall attempt has failed. The house markers have been set in the ground. A white pickup truck with an engineering logo on its side doors regularly visits the property no doubt finalizing the build strategy. The Wildlife Commission wrote an email this week to say there is no gopher tortoise violation on the “subject property” as I had hoped.

The die – as they say – appear to have been cast.

Part of me thinks this is instant karma. Punishment from the Universe for cutting a real estate agent we’d been working with – no binding contract but more of an implicit arrangement – out of the closing. We had to move fast and efficiently to get the house, I reckoned. Part of me knows I am rationalizing.

Fear-based thinking. Again.

There was a something that lingered in the air above this house deal though. Something I couldn’t quite put my finger on. That may sound a little too flakey for most of you. It is too flakey and “oooie, oooie” for me to take seriously. But I wonder.

I think of all the ways in which this development could be worse. I think of the chaos and upheaval of Israelis and Palestinians preparing for the savagery of war. I reflect on seeing an arm uncovered in the rubble of that Gaza hospital and the horrible news that will be delivered to a family. Many families in this case. I think about Ukrainians returning to where their family homes once stood and learn they have been obliterated by bombs.

My troubles are so small by comparison. Miniscule. But they are my troubles. I feel I need to stand up for them and give them their emotional due. I spent years ignoring and diminishing hurtful events in my life. They just backed up inside of me.

I would explode disproportionately when some other minor insult triggered the backed up, unhealed hurt inside of me. The earlier hurt hadn’t been dealt with so it could dissipate. It had merely gone underground waiting to rear its ugly head when triggered – usually by a more minor threat by a relatively innocent bystander.

It is common for people to ignore or diminish troubles of others when those troubles don’t affect them personally. There is a human tendency to feel a sense of sympathy and concern about others’ misfortunes and an equal measure of relief because it isn’t happening to them.

We all encounter problems on our journey in life. Mostly we are thankful when someone else’s tragedy does not touch our own life. When tragedy does strike us, we pray for the grace and strength to face and overcome it. It is one of life’s toughest learnings.

People are not comfortable generally with strong feelings. Either their own or someone else’s. We like our shared illusion of a calm and stable society.

If strong feelings were easily accepted and as easily processed, the booze and illicit drug business would collapse. Angry people are called “hysterical” unless the listener has buy-in with the issue people are angry about. I think of Trump and his legions of followers who eagerly slurp up his incessant brand of outrage over hard done by “patriots” like him.

It is so automatic to shush a child who is crying healing tears. It is common to accuse a woman of “being dramatic” when a sudden, inconceivable loss bends her in half convulsed in tears. Or her husband has beaten her senseless and is holding her children hostage in a bitter custody case.

Unbelievably, Alex Jones accused grieving Sandy Hook parents of delusion when their children were mowed down by a madman toting an AR-15. Jones finally came to justice but not before numerous grieving parents were tortured and belittled by Jones’ ardent followers.

The insinuation of grief creeps slowly into our lives. It is easier to manage when we are young, we reason, because we are more resilient. We can certainly move on faster. When we’re older, the processing of grief is usually more internal. “Stiff, upper lip” syndrome comes into play.

Loss is a fact of life. Some losses we can easily identify and readily relate to. Other losses are more personal and nuanced. How we learn to handle loss is spread across a very wide continuum.

So I accept that I am on a grieving path. For trees. And a view. And a dream of peace and solitude that will soon be irrevocably shattered. Does it matter in the grand scheme of things? Of course not. But does it matter to me? Absolutely.

I have learned that self-love and self-respect means owning all of our feelings and failings and giving them their due until they have been integrated into your heart and psyche. Life is not an endless series of “happy, happy, happy.” I challenge anyone to show me someone whose life is.

Change is inevitable and pain is manageable. I take this recent loss as another opportunity to apply what I’ve learned about managing disappointment. And of course, I wish I didn’t have to. I’m only human, after all.

Lived Experience

Does anyone else have the same problem I have? I am dumbstruck by the number of people who have lived and died on Planet Earth. Neil deGrasse Tyson says approximately 10,000,000,000 (that’s 10 billion for those of you who, like me, are numerically challenged.) Given the world population is hovering around 7 billion. or so, that represents some intense population growth in the past couple of hundred years.

All we can ever know of people who went before us are what we hear about them or stories we read about them. We make huge assumptions about who they were based on hearsay and material artifacts and what people of an earlier time wrote. Our imagination of the lives of our forebears is largely apocryphal.

Understanding how others live today is a lot like that, too. We make assumptions about people that are based on scant and usually superficial information. Or more likely, curated information. I have seen resumes that are the greatest works of fiction ever published. Scandal du jour joker and “alleged” felon George Santos is only the most recent public offender.

I often wonder what daily life must have been like in the old days. Television and movies are great for filling in holes in our imagination. In movies and on TV, we are served curated scenarios that allow us to imagine the lives and lifestyles of those who lived long before we did or very differently. And in astonishing variety. Courtiers, family farmers, aristocrats, or maybe the occasional itinerant pastor who roamed the countryside with his horse and buggy spreading the word of the lord.

What fascinates me are the assumptions we make from what we observe. We can only speculate what is going on intellectually or emotionally inside other people. Past and present. I sometimes feel this frustration watching Holocaust footage. It is not only what you see, that is horrifying, but what you can’t see. Broken, skeletal, barely-clinging-to-life bodies twisted in pain convey some of their reality. But not everything.

One can only imagine the terror and humiliation of young Jewish females shaved bald and stripped naked before being paraded in front of leering Nazi camp guards. What must those young women have been thinking? What questions must they have asked themselves? What panicky racing thoughts did they have? Was their imminent demise clear in their minds or were they actually lulled into the delusion of the gas chambers as showers?

In the Steven Spielberg movie Schindler’s List, there is a particularly poignant scene – among many – where an elegant and clearly wealthy young woman disembarks from one of the trains at a camp. She dismissively gives a healthy handful of Reichsmarks as a tip. Her Jewish compatriot is already wearing the trademark black and grey striped pajamas and humbly takes away her bag. We have only the sad look on his pained face by which to gauge his reaction.

I do not understand evil very well. I do not understand what causes a teenager to walk into a building full of precious human beings with a semi-automatic weapon and deliberately start spraying bullets. Worse, I do not understand how a creature like Alex Jones who identifies as a “broadcaster” could consistently call the Sandy Hook massacre of innocent children a hoax, let alone have anyone believe him. I cannot imagine being a bereaved parent of a child victim futilely defending against that level of evil insanity. Those parents were bullied by people who believed Jones! I often wonder how those parents have made sense of their lives.

The only explanation I can come up with is that when nature is out of balance, life goes out of balance. We are a society wildly out of balance. Important institutions that were nurseries for human souls like communities or churches or extended families and even steady consistent parenting or any kind of certainty have broken down. Combining that with the information overload of our current epoch and mass breakdown was all but certain.

How is anyone supposed to internalize enough sense of self to navigate the exceptionally murky water and future that is presented to young people today? My daughter tells me that is why “mid-century” chic is so popular. People are looking backward more than forward. She also says it is why young people spend sinful amounts of money on gaudy self-care such as colored hair and three-inch acrylic nails. It is a world of “Why not?” and “What does it matter?” It is also a world of addiction. a teen suicide epidemic, easy divorces. All are indicative of a nationwide – even global – and communal loss of direction and purpose.

All of this external frazzle puts the onus back on us to create a better way of being for ourselves and our loved ones. Find a healthy and productive path and walk it with like-minded individuals who want to live better, richer, saner lives. I have a mountaineer friend who cured her booze addiction by climbing on rock and ice faces. I saw many brave if tremulous individuals surrender their to take the white chip in AA meetings as a first step toward sobriety. I know single mothers who go without to give their children everything they can give them.

Pain and obstacles are part of life. But so are joy and love. At an earlier time and maybe still in some places in the world, the interwebs of love in which people live function well enough to hold communities and each other together.

It wasn’t so long ago that a sense of community was widespread and dependable. Not without their own issues or problems to be sure. Where they don’t exist today, it behooves us to keep our counsel and to keep looking for one or create one that works for us.