SELF-REPAIR TIME
Monday, January 18, 2021 - daily column #6641
Scary events, perilous potential – literal significance when things turn gravely dangerous – usually distant in time or place, concerning people in countries we scarcely know, their turmoil roiling, or their earth shook.
Floods and fires, earthquake or seaquake – hurricanes and tsunamis, indiscriminate as lightning, striking every day but typically missing everything vital. Those rivers find their way to oceans, oceans erode shores, vicious storms don’t know geographical or ethical boundaries – terrain self-restores in the fullness of time. Like nothing ever happened.
The world is self-repairing.
But people, not so much.
I was 11. The Cuban Missile Crisis; my parents were frightened. We watched TV but could not fully appreciate that situation’s gravity or place in history. Played-out as a pivotal nearly-Armageddon event. It was. Adroitly, or luckily, disaster was averted. Politics is high-stakes poker; lives and liberty are bargaining chips too cavalierly trivialized …
Events of last week, and this week, unprecedented and history-changing, played out in real-time before a global audience, and shamefully too, for an audience of one.
Unconscionable actions, foreseen consequences, insurrection on a scale considered treasonous in most regimes, deaths – perpetrators to be punished but sadly, the one most answerable, sent to his room, forbidden to Tweet …
Pick your issue/malady; politics, pandemics, purges and parodies – if it wasn’t so precarious, so near-catastrophic, it could all be a sick joke. Last week and this week will be forgotten, but not any time soon. Countries and people can self-repair too – a question of a collective will, and on that issue, the jury is out.
Storm debris washes away, but can America self-repair?
Reader feedback:
Thank you for your perceptive musing this morning, Mark. A while back, I listened to a presentation from a VP of Operations, on the trial and tribulations of his business, and he said they had had the ‘gift of failure’ along the way, which struck me as a positive way to move through a failure and not be mired in it. The ‘Gift of Failure’- a learning experience, if embraced honestly and constructively, RT, White Rock, BC
Mark, after a day on the mountain at Norquay, where Theo and I skied yesterday, I'm definitely feeling it! Also feeling healthier. Identifying with your muse put my brain in gear. Thanks and continue to be well my friend, JJ, Calgary, AB