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Being reborn

I died several times this week.  Not really, obviously, but I was pushed past limits I was trying to hold on to.  What I find is on the other side is what I might call hopelessness, but it is a different sort of hopelessness.  It is the resignation that recognizes that you can expostulate, shout, scream, worry, fret, get angry etc. about how the world is, and in the end, your opinion, my opinion, really don’t matter that much.  This is not to say we should not try to change things for the better, but that we need to be clear that all worthwhile change takes time, and that if you tie your peace of mind to ridiculous, hopeless fantasies, you will be unhappy, and you will miss what opportunities for happiness DO come your way.  Above all, you will be ineffective.

Me, I fight this world.  I do not accept it as it is.  But I have to also accept it as it is.  You have to carry both ideas at the same time.

Particularly in the present day, it seems that a great many college students are shocked that the fantasy world they have imagined has not yet come into being.  They dream of a world which has never been, then get frustrated that it is not already here.  This is infantile.

I say the present day.  Were not the projects of the Communists similar?  Did they not dream of worlds that had never been, social orders that have never existed, then commit acts of mass murder, torture, mass imprisonment, and put countless secret police on the corners to coerce this new world?

Without altering its fundamental nature, can you make a tomato plant grow in one tenth of the time?  Can you make human infants become adults in two years?  Nature has its schedule.  Human social change is the same.  Impatience is not only not a virtue, it is in general responsible for failure, which is what the “War on Poverty” has been, which is what the efforts to integrate blacks have been, which is what the war on drugs has been, and which in large measure is what the War on Terror has been .  There was no ISIS when Bush invaded Iraq.  That happened under the watch of someone whose election was in large measure engineered in opposition to that war; someone who seems to view the legitimate national security interests of the United States as inherently wrong, and who seemingly views our enemies as white hatted cavalry, for the simple reason that they oppose us.

Returning to my point, I was thinking about the phoenix.  It is reborn young.  All legitimate deaths result in new births, and renewed youth.  This is my operative hypothesis.