A Leaky Dinghy
If I announced that I was less clear on the way of the world, it might generate a collective "duh." A dis-harmonic convergence, if you will. There would be silent shouts of "About time!" and "Nice you could make the bus!" with intemperate appellations hung on in address. Yeah, well... It's not like I ever said that I knew what was going on, but I suppose one might have inferred from my writings that the solutions I proffered were based on the presumption that I understood the problems.
For the longest time, I've been sailing along in a leaky dinghy with the name "Hope" fading from the stern. If I weren't thinking of jumping ship, I might get someone to scrape off the last remaining flakes of paint, and re-christen the craft "Wistfulness." Because hope is sailing away on a sullen tide, and I'm left ruing what might have been; particularly the extraordinary potential of those beings we call human.
Imagine if we had a government of managers instead of politicians; people who were vested in making our country work. People who didn't have private agendas and "friends" who paid for regulatory and policy favors with campaign contributions. People who did the right thing because it was the right thing. Imagine if the most talented people in the country were in government, long enough to right this rickety ship of state and set our sails to put us on a progressive course into an invigorating breeze.
We humans are grossly under-utilized at the moment. Our capabilities haven't been but barely tapped. We don't have an inkling of what it is we are truly capable of. If instead of worrying about Iraq, the commute, and our neighbor's creeping crabgrass, we created new solutions to old problems and explored our remarkable abilities to sense beyond our senses, we would be on the road to discover what is possible.
My goodness, what a franchise. What an obligation. What else is there? Um, there's daily life. There are the myriad slothful, unaesthetic and cranky. There are the dark people. When the population was more proportionate to the planet, there weren't so many of these nasties. Both the numbers and the percentages are up and grossly out of whack these days, in part because the stress of too-many-rats-in-a-box has perverted lazy minds with willful negativity.
I'm hoping that it isn't contagious. That I won't feel like giving up the ship, fighting with conscience and duty, to seek my share of the shrinking pie. But how else do I get The Lovely Linda out of the office and into a house on the coast, if I keep holding out and don't just throw myself at the next opportunity? I wonder what kind of terms they are offering for an old man who wants to play centerfield.
Of course, it doesn't work that way. Sail and bail, sail and bail. I'm aware that if I reach out too far for that brass ring, I risk capsizing the boat. And with miles to go before I sleep, I hardly want to make the trip in wet clothes.
And that's SetonnoteS...I'm Tony Seton.
.