Monday, August 11, 2014

A single, sensical pebble...or, stop supporting potato salad online!

Ahh, summer. Anesthetizing summer, where each raw nerve and astute observation is somehow made numb or less sharp by the alluring scents of grilling meats and potent flora. And what we should see and do see is often shaded by big, leafy trees that leave us longing for a nap and a book in the sleepy heat.

I love summer. The blade is dull. Summer is the flame, we are moths...insert more cheesy metaphors here.

But shit is happening all over the globe. Real shit. Big serious shit that is incomparable to about 90% of the conversations I have on a daily basis. I cringe at myself sometimes, I cringe at the words spewing out into a cauldron of conversation. I see what people are posting about their daily lives and think, "Jesus Christ, Gaza is on fire and we really have the audacity to give a shit about body image...still?" But these things are important, all things are important to all people.

Perspective. Perspective. Where did all the perspective go?

I think we should all be suffering from a little bit of survivor's guilt. Maybe even shame at times, for choosing to ignore the vast sea of suffering that roils right at our feet while we play in the sand. Maybe I should stop trolling the web at night. Nothing sets off my insomnia like a GoFundMe page for an already privileged white kid wanting to raise funds for his/her private school education. Or a litany of posts about the sad state of affairs in third world countries interspersed with numerous pictures from a second home "on the vineyard", a trip to the American Girl Café, and then another post about women's reproductive rights. Then "This stuff in the Middle East is awful" and "Those poor girls in Nigeria" then "Great waves in Malibu today..."

We've all gone totally batshit crazy. Or, perhaps, it just appears that we have.

Where are the causes? Is anyone getting behind a cause anymore and sticking to it? Does anyone feel the weight of their privilege when their GoFundMe site pleading for money to take their kid to a trumped up beauty contest/state gymnastics championship is flanked by one where a baby needs life-saving cancer treatment? Who hits a donate button on a multi-billion dollar museum expansion project but deletes a newsletter asking for small donations to stamp out local hunger?

Our hearts are bleeding and good for us, but I can't help but wonder if we're bleeding into a drain sometimes. There is a logical order to things and the older I get, the more I wonder about the logic.

Let's teach kids math by getting a big grant to have dancers come to the math classroom and do integrative dance to incorporate algebraic concepts...

That's admirable. But you've gotta figure that at least 46% of the kids in that math classroom haven't eaten breakfast and are probably too hungry to give a shit about dancing around. They can't learn on an empty stomach. Empty stomach=empty brain.

Guess which one will get the money...ballerinas attempting to teach right angles.

No one really knows how to save the world. We think we do. We wish we did. But there is a way to start that makes sense. There are priorities. Somehow. Start with life, then take it from there, I guess...

Stay tuned.