Any given Tuesday

I once thought I lived in a period of time where everyone had lost their mind. People on the street. People in Office. Celebrities, commoners, clergy. The news was filled with recklessness, mutilation, infidelity, suicide. The pictures were damning. And I watched everything. Each scandal stranger, another life ruined; marriages, careers, reputations irrevocably lost.

Then one night I went to sleep, and the following day I awoke. And all around me I saw that what had the previous night seemed a shell of a life - destitute, depraved – now stared back at me healthy, happy. Color pictures of people in the sun.

And my heart sank. This wasn’t triumph over adversity, or the resilience of the human spirit. This was a past with no meaning, this was everything mutable. I don’t know if I can distinguish between hopefulness and desperation.

Work that day was pretty good. I had a nice sandwich for lunch, which I made myself (who says we don’t manufacture anything anymore?), and a granola bar. I was productive, and even used the word “roger” in a joshing way, but one that kind of made me wish I was an air traffic controller, or perhaps a fighter pilot.

So, it’s six of one, isn’t it? And then there’s a half dozen of another.