I daydream about a small rural cottage, made of stone, situated high on an ocean-view ridge where a forest intersects with natural pastures. The cottage is warm and comfortable. It is hidden by topography from the few people who might have reason to be in its vicinity. Even if those people knew of the place, they would respect my privacy. In that cottage, I would allow myself to think and to imagine and to dream—to lose myself in ideas that can be fully explored only in quiet solitude. Reality complicates my daydream when, to my chagrin, I allow practical thoughts to intrude: How do I get food and fresh water, what about electricity and internet access, how long can I stay? Absent those irritating practical interruptions, my daydream might be precisely what I want and need to distance myself from the pain and disappointments of the real world. How, I wonder, can I prevent practical matters from invading my thoughts? The more I consider this dilemma, the clearer it becomes: if I cannot spend time in my imaginary cottage, I will spend time in a fantasy world in which my imaginary cottage is real; and practicality is an unwelcome and unnecessary obstacle.
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A powerful longing for peace and serenity admittedly is at odds with smoldering embers of anger that periodically erupt into volcanic rage. Yet those contradictory emotions are intertwined with one another, separated only by immeasurably thin threads of rationality. But those threads of rationality—always subject to immense strain—sometimes snap, enabling competing temperaments to blend into emotions no words can adequately express. At their extreme, those indescribable emotions enable a loving father to put himself at great risk to rescue his daughter from the grip of a would-be rapist; and, then, to hack the assailant to death with a machete. Those blended emotions, though, only rarely reach that extreme. Along the spectrum of their intensity, they can unleash levels of anger ranging from harsh words to unspeakable physical violence. Most people are innately limited in the degree to which they approach the extreme. Yet almost everyone is capable of bypassing those limits in certain demanding circumstances. At least that’s my take on the human condition.
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Is the world unraveling? Are we witnessing (and complicit in allowing) the fall of an empire of which we are a part? If the empire is falling, can we say with certainty its dissolution is a bad thing? My answers to those questions are irrelevant because I am not qualified/equipped to answer them. But I have opinions. And I have experience with the neck-deep propaganda advanced by the defenders and enemies of the empire. And I have limited experience which allows me to compare some of the propaganda with reality; my opinion is that reality is more believable. China is far more advanced, for example, than Western political zealots would have us believe. The people of China, from what I’ve seen, are much better off than those zealots tell us. That’s true of many other places, as well. The world outside our borders is more sophisticated, more interesting, more educational, more intriguing, and more attractive than we are taught/led to believe. Which of the remaining empires will fill the void we leave—if, indeed, we leave a void to fill? Should a void be filled…or should it be left open and unsullied by thought manipulation and indoctrination? I feel deeply skeptical this morning. Nothing is as I once thought. A look in the mirror tells me I am not who I once claimed to be.
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My mood has shifted from sad to surly…with a bit of somber sorrow thrown in. It will be best if I crawl back under the covers and hide from the light.
