A Detour in the Schedule

February has brought some very cold weather to South Carolina, and I am the victim again of a nagging head cold that refuses to move on. To have two such adventures this winter has been a big surprise. Perhaps when I was teaching dozens of students I built up a much stronger resistance to germs and hence rarely had a cold. But, just as sure as you tell someone you are feeling low, the response is always the same..i.e.its a lot worse over their way, and the feeling is that you are lucky not to be as bad off as they are. Well, being bad off for me is to have my ears stuffed to the gills and sound distorted in all sorts of odd ways. It is painful to practice the piano, and only slightly worse to hear someone else play it. But one does muddle on, and hopes for the moment when it all lifts and floats away.

There is a lesson in this, as there is always a lesson in life when one's routine is interrupted. It makes you appreciate your norm, how wedded you are to routine, and how routine can bring great accomplishment and rewards. But it goes alot furthur for me. It brings home the reality that many people in this world only have the routine of waking up each morning to a world that is worse than the day before. Yes, we are suffering from an economic nightmare, but what if we were suffering the way people are in parts of Africa at this moment. Is there anything worse in the world than starvation? Is there any thing worse than being tormented by people whose only desire is your property, and if geting it means murder in cold blood, then that is the result? The power of the gun is looming over our heads every day of our lives.

I have noticed while flipping through television channels when bored, how many guns flash by, how many murders in cold blood, and how many people being tortured for the thrill of it. We seem to be besotted with guns, and just as besotted with the desire for revenge. So it is just entertainment you say. Perhaps the real truth is how victimized we are by television producers, and how easily we accept it as entertainment. Hence, I rent Netflik and try to avoid the TV except when something sane comes along.