All About Perspective

Yes, life is tough right now – lockdowns, US election tomfoolery, realizing you are living north of a country where a large portion of the population if not condone racism and misogyny, adultery and sexual assault, cowardice and sociopathy, turn a blind eye to it and elected a president who personifies these evils. Oh, make no mistake, I’ve always hated Trump; I remember his cons and the victims he left in his wake. Never once watched his absurd reality show; I found him to be repellant. His manner, his face…just, frankly, made me want to throw up.

We are relegated to our homes; shopping is a chore, visits with friends and family is forbidden. People are dying; front line workers are burning out, leaving their professions.

Depression is seeping into our lives, impacting our kids, ourselves.

We all need to take a step back, especially, during this month of remembrance. We need to step out of our bubbles of self-pity and remember, recall.

No, we can’t socialize but our loved ones, our friends are available to us – we can call, we can video-chat. We can do drive-by meet and greet. Imagine not being able to do have that contact, to be assured of the health, the safety of our near & dear. Imagine, (I find this almost impossible), knowing our spouse, our child is facing death, every second as multitudes of people are, actively, trying to kill them. Leave them to die, alone, in the mud, in the stench, in fear.

Perspective. We all need to get over ourselves. What we face is an inconvenience, that’s all. An inconvenience. Business owners howl. Put on your adult panties and be that entrepreneur, find a way to survive – use the tools at your disposal. You are alive, you don’t face a gun, bullets, gas – bombs. Use that and find a way around this.

If you live in North America, if you live in a land that was founded on immigration? Take a minute and remember the courage, the fortitude of your ancestors. They came to your country with nothing, and built a life. Far from what they knew, far from the comfort of familiarity. Some of them didn’t speak the language. They adapted. They moved forward and created a future. That’s something we all must do and in much more favourable circumstances than was faced by our grandparents, our great-grandparents.

We all need to grow up and pull on some of the courage of our ancestors. Perspective. Put your whines, your complaints, into perspective. Re-adjust your expectations.

I may well lose my job, probably within weeks. Okay, this is adversity, but nothing compared to what my forebearers faced. I will adjust my expectations. I’ll adapt. I will find a way to make this work, hopefully, to my advantage. My grandfather fought for my right to live in freedom. He lived in mud, death, disease; watched his friends die. He made this sacrifice for me. For you. I can’t let him down, I can’t let those who fought and died for my right to create an existence, to have done this for nothing.

If you are reading this and you support that draft dodging criminal, who managed to fool a lot of the people, a lot of the time? Remember, while he dodged the draft, some other young man had to take his place and could well have died or been maimed due to his cowardice. He and his family, do not, nor have they ever, represented the American spirit, the American integrity and pride.