What Year Is It?

Thursday September 29th, 2011 - Fox Lake, IL

   Today is the first full day of the Jewish new year 5772. The Chinese year is 4708. In our society we’re lagging way behind in 2011. Does anyone actually know for a fact what the hell year it actually is? Of course not. We as humanity don‘t know a whole lot else either.

   We’ve had thousands of years to get it together as a species, and we’re not even close to figuring it out. We’re still hung up on petty issues like skin color and which plot of dirt is supposed to be ‘holier’ than another. My aching bung hole, can’t we get it settled already?

   Every culture is hung up on something, and it’s not getting any better. Religion adds to both the confusion and tension because everyone thinks theirs is correct and everyone else is going to sizzle in a flaming barbecue pit for eternity because they didn’t share the same belief in some invisible space being that knows every time we fart, pee, belch or sneeze.

   The older I get, the less I’m buying of any of it. I guess I’m officially the curmudgeonly old croaker I never dreamed I’d become. Why is the world the way it is, and why can’t we make it better or at least a little more fair? I’m not satisfied with the way things are going, and I can’t be the only one who’s losing hope. Something’s wrong, and it needs fixing.

   Greedy bastards seem to be winning, and that’s just not right. I would think if there is a higher power that it would have been taken care of by now, but it isn’t. In fact, it’s getting a whole lot worse in a very short time. I wish I could have faith it’s getting better, but I’m just not seeing it. My own life is going pretty well, but the world around me is imploding.

   That’s what’s so frustrating. Just when I finally seem to be figuring the key things out in life and getting myself on a productive path, the rest of the world seems to be sliding back down whatever mountain we’ve been trying to climb for the past several thousand years.

   Has it always been this way? Unfortunately, probably yes. It’s only now that I’m seeing it clearly, and it makes me feel very insignificant. In this enormous infinite universe, I am but one of six billion other cosmic specks that comprise human kind, and none of us have done much to make the place we live better than we found it. We should all be ashamed.

   I know I am. I should have been doing what I’m doing decades ago, but I was too stupid to figure it out then. I was too busy being pissed off at things I couldn’t control, and all it did was waste most of my youth and dilute my creative vision. And there are no do-overs.

   Is 5772 going to be the year there’s finally peace in the Middle East? I hope so, but that should have happened 5771 years ago in my opinion. New generations crop up but do not let go of the past stupidity that wasted the lives of their ancestors. I don’t want to do that.

   I swear I’m on the wrong planet, and sometimes I just want to get back on the spaceship and go home, wherever that is. Am I or anyone else here ‘for a reason’ or is this just a big cruel cosmic prank? I don’t know, but I have my doubts. Something just doesn’t add up.

Posted via email from Dobie Maxwell's "Dented Can" Diary