Wednesday, March 11, 2009

food for thought


Getting a wound can take a second.

Healing a wound can be a long process. Incredibly, our bodies know how to react to the initial opening, the alert goes out, cells kick in, and healing begins.

There are four stages to healing a wound, stopping blood loss, reconstruction, migration, and maturation and remodeling. If the wound is not large no outside remedy is needed. The body can repair itself. If the wound is gaping sutures bind the edges to encourage faster healing.

Our country was wounded. Everyone rallied all around the world to help us repair the damage but we lost our way following 9/11. We received a direct hit to one of our countries nerve centers and split into two factions that believed in different healing potions. For eight long years we bled. We were unable to stanch the flow of blood and became weakened in the aftermath. We never got past the first phase of healing.

Today, we look around and see attempts at reconstruction. Like nature, things that heal and grow never give up. We are faced with massive infection so we've taken out the medical kit and are experimenting with a new treatment. The infection is everywhere, we might not succeed, but our instincts tell us to try anyway.

There is nothing more terrifying to those who have been in power to have to sit back and watch the new leaders experiment with a new treatment. No one knows if it will work, but everyone knows that if enough fight against it, the likely hood of it not working increases.

i'll say that again: If enough fight against a new cure the likely hood of it not working increases.

Questions abound, articles are written daily concerning the direction the country should consider. Some, just want to continue doing what we have been doing which isn't healing the wound.

How are we going to heal?

Will we be disabled by the new and innovative actions we take today? The following questions are making the rounds on the internet strings, looping back on themselves trying to find the path.

A primary one to consider is if the growth model we have been following for the past fifty years is simply unsustainable both economically and ecologically?

Has prioritizing private markets over public interests been our undoing?

After half a century of catering to defense contractors could we save money and stop bleeding by closing bases around the world, reevaluating the use of obsolete weapons systems, reconsidering nuclear disarmament around the world and speeding up the end of the invasion of Iraq?

Should government protect people's health or insurance companies profits?

Who got the stimulus money and what did they do with it?

Who is our worst enemy, terrorists or the sinking planet?

Is your food safe to eat?

The list goes on and on.

Today the other side is claiming this new administration is only about tax, spend and borrow. For those non-thinkers out there this is easy to remember. Tax, spend and borrow. It sticks in the mind easily and it is not just true about this new administration but it is true of all administrations. They all just tax, spend and borrow but what they tax, spend and borrow for differs.

Yesterday it was tax the middle class, spend on weapons, war and defense, and borrow against the future. Tomorrow it is tax the upper class, spend on health, jobs and the environment and borrow against the future.

Choose your weapon. i kind of like tomorrow's outlook.

We have a long way to go to heal this country. We need to work together to close the wound. It is time to support a new way of doing things for the old way has failed miserably and the wound is gaping. Lets try to close it up.

It's their future.

Wednesday, March 4, 2009

love your home



i'm kind of lucky, i guess, because i love and i mean really love where i live. i like the people, the weather, the ocean, for me it is the center of the universe. i've loved this island ever since i moved here many years ago and that love hasn't diminished one tiny bit.

i'm not one that expects perfection and this place has its problems, there is lots of crime, poverty, and dysfunction like anywhere, but it's not severe enough to make me wish i lived somewhere else. i love traveling, love adventures but by the end of the trip i'm dying to get home. i enjoy all my time away soaking up the new terrain but no other place has ever called to me the way this island does.

A while back i was perusing the internet strings( i'm addicted to the strings) i clicked into an article that detailed Americans satisfaction and/or dissatisfaction with their domicile.

Shock number one, more people are unhappy with where they live than are happy.

This took me so off guard that i have spent way more time contemplating this unhappiness than i should.

The questions running through my mind ran the gamut but one stood out.

Why does where you live not satisfy you?

That question dominated my thoughts more than any of the others i came up with. i understood why people were unhappy where they lived but what i couldn't understand was why they didn't change it.

Why be miserable living somewhere you didn't want to? And what was it about that place that was making you miserable?

This island certainly isn't for everyone. If you are used to things happening rapidly and with a certain amount of expertise and quality don't come here. Things get done but at a much slower pace which can drive speedy people up the wall. They forget, after the vacation is over, that those lackadaisical qualities were charming at one time.

i know for many, economics is the primary motivator for staying where they are even when it makes them miserable and hence my next question.

If it is only money that keeps you in place, but it is making you unhappy, is that money really that important? Would it be such a leap to take a gamble and move to a place that might fit your psyche more completely, even if you had to live on less?

Here is another question.

Are you really yourself in this place where you are so unhappy?

Can you find yourself there? And finally,

if you can't find yourself there, why do you stay?

In the midst of writing just now i went to check my e-mail.

A crabby friend sent out an e-mail this morning that ends with a line that is perfect for this piece. He said and i quote:

This mornings run was uninspired so I got in the water to cool off with a water run. Waist deep the first hawkbill turtle breached 20 feet from me. Chest deep a second one breached 30 feet the other side of me. Started water running and for the next 20 min. a dolphin swam from 10 ft of me to 100 yds from me and was still there when I left for work

LESSON: A sucky day in the VI beats a good day most anywhere else.


Then another friend adds in:

It really is a hard life we live down here... I'm really jealous of the dolphin...

And so, think long and hard about where you want to spend the bulk of your life, raising kids, feeling part of a community and making a difference. If you can't be yourself, don't stay.