Hope Required

Today was a fairly quiet one at work.  Most of what I have done is simply sorting out minor problems for the mechanically challenged. One person seemed to have truly either lied to me. She had failed to abide by the number one rule that applies after seeing me, NO DRINKING.  Her loss.  Either she accepts my decision or she appeals it.  Either way she will be suffering economic consequences. The rules are simple, don’t drink and if it looks like you have been drinking, prove to me that you weren’t.  A simple urine test will resolve the question.

I have not really been checking Facebook or the news stream very often.  Two night ago, there was a terrible act of violence in England.  There has been precious little that is really meaningful in the electronic static stream.  The bomber has a surname that is Arabic sounding.  He died in the blast, I gather that makes him a suicide bomber.  Another person has been arrested but what his connection is to the dead little girls at the pop concert is uncertain.  Who plants a bomb to kill fifteen-year-old girls?

About the only horror that has not be inflicted on the world in my lifetime is the use of a nuclear bomb on a populated area.  Genocide of millions of people has been waged on several parts of the globe in my 61 years.  Hot wars and cold wars have been waged.  Acts of terror, mass and small, have been carried out.  To what end?

These deaths are not deaths that have furthered the chances of our species surviving the changing global climate.  These deaths have been carried out either in the furtherance of advancing one groups economic advantage over the other or to impose a certain ethical or moral code on “infidels”.  Death because group A eats pork and calls their God by a different name than the non-pork eating group B seems really stupid to me.

I can understand the economic battles.  Food, water, shelter and Wi-Fi these are things to blow up buildings and kill people for.  However, murder over what your call a God, a God that says to both groups you shall not murder makes no sense. 

The battles leave me weary.  The deaths are senseless.  The need to be on top in the battle of creeds and oaths seems frivolous.  Maybe it is my humanist roots showing that I believe in tolerance and coexistence.

…

Saying these things does not move me anywhere closer to a being a citizen of a world committed to survival.  I am a product of privilege.  My water has always been clean and my food supply steady. Not so much for so many in this overcrowded place.  How do I realistically do something that makes a difference?

I guess that is my starting point.  Starting from small acts what can I do to aid others as I pass through the remaining years of my life.  I guess that I can act with kindness and not turn away from the homeless people who are at the corners of every scene I pass through in this life. Maybe I can give some of the money I spend on coffee each day to something better.