Time for a rant.
It seems to me that America has become a nation paralyzed by fear into impractical inaction. Our greed bubble has popped. The wizards of finance have been unmasked and the pyramid has collapsed. The double-dip recession is a depression produced by wanton double-dipping. The marks have been fleeced out of what they had and then what they didn’t have. Now there’s no blood left to suck. All that is left is to point fingers at someone — anyone but ourselves. So we roll about in the dung of our empty opinions, bolstered by the opinion making pundits on TV, radio, and blogs, unwilling to take on the challenges that are burying us alive. We want our free pass at the candy store back, but it’s gone, gone, gone.
To paraphrase Viktor Emil Frankl, to be human is take on the challenges that life puts before us. In our blame-shifting, name-calling, do-nothingness — health-care? (Hell no), financial reform? (Hell no!), help our fellows who are out of work? (Hell no), tackle climate change (Hell no!), dig ourselves out of the pit of our greedy folly? (Hell no!) — we are failing the test of being human.
Tomorrow I will set sail in my little boat. My intention is to make a 300-mile run down the windy coast of California. It has been a great relief to devote my mind and body to the tasks of preparing her. It will be an even greater relief to give myself over to the the challenges that life will put before me on the open sea. Out there, my opinions are of no consequence. All that matters is that I tether my mind and body to the challenges at hand. I do not even contemplate the price of inaction in such a circumstance.
While our nation languishes in inaction, the seas of change are washing over her. America is drowning in her own fear, reaction, and despair over lost treasures it never possessed.
