Not Yet Nirvana

The country is divided. You are either right wing or left wing, you live in a blue state or a red state and if you disagree you are unpatriotic. Political candidates, well, at least the only two allowed to be recognized as such, spend their time bashing each other. The media dishes the dirt on each of them and not so evenly perhaps. From both sides, we hear how bad things are, how we are under threat, and how our way of life is being threatened. Frightened and cowed by the political rhetoric, frustrated and distracted by the media and desperately fact checking every statement, an endless job, we turn our anger toward each other. We draw lines in the sand about whether or not standing for the national anthem, itself a song about war and written while witnessing an attack, constitutes treason. We support police, law and order even when we see fellow citizens shot and killed over nothing or at least for no capital crime. We support protesting those actions and yet are hard pre...

I may be depressed. I have eight of the eleven symptoms listed for depression. That’s depressing! I’ve always been an existential brooder, not that I am generally pessimistic, I consider myself a realist. But I think that constitutes a subjective analysis. The articles I’ve read suggest there may be a trigger for this depressive episode. I lost my mother back in April. That may fill the bill. Her dying could be the root cause of what I am experiencing. I am inclined to believe that to be the case. On the other hand, it doesn’t feel like it. Age may have something to do with what I'm feeling. I am older, fatter, shorter and weaker than I used to be and what I used to be, what I identified as being for most of my adult life, was dependent upon two things; my career as a correctional officer and even more importantly, my martial arts training. You can see where the age thing would play havoc with my self-esteem. Because of injuries sustained over a long period of time and thr...

I worry. I worry, a lot. Especially now that I am firmly in my sixties, both my parents have passed away, my mother only recently so, and I am three years from retiring. My children are in their thirties and they live in another country. Okay, a bit melodramatic there. I live here in the States and my children live in Canada about twelve hours away. Seems like twelve light years, though. I have stepchildren. Yeah, I am re-married. The first marriage was not so good and ended acrimoniously. And yes, I do have regrets about that because it caused my children and I to be estranged. It scarred them. I have tried to make amends but I will always feel guilty. It was my fault. My second marriage was fraught with drama resulting from the situation surrounding my first marriage. I had baggage. A lot of baggage. But this marriage, thirteen years now, will last! We’ve been through the worst and we’ve come out stronger. My wife is my best friend, my lover, my confidant and we have a gre...