Rain, Rain Go Away

Please make your own comment at the end of this piece.

I upset some people with last week’s blog. According to statistics only ten per cent of people who get offended voice their opinions or write a comment. I got two comments taking me to task, so I project that twenty people were offended.

That’s kind of too bad. Unless people are so offended they terminate reading what I have to say. Offended is not terminal, as a colleague used to remark. I acknowledge problems in our country, and if you are a regular reader you know that I frequently point them out:
•Our president is a lame duck (lame, unfortunately, in a lot of ways) and is biding his remaining time rather than trying to solve problems both domestic and international.
•Our presidential candidates are campaigning rather than doing the jobs we pay them for (listen up, Hillary and Barack!).
•The housing market, despite the intervention of the Fed yesterday, is in the toilet and people are losing their homes left and right.
•Global warming continues to take its toll.
•We are spending ourselves into oblivion and our national debt comes to about $2,000 for every citizen, and probably about the same for those living here who aren’t citizens for whatever reason.
•The United States uses the great majority of the world’s resources despite having a minority of the world’s population.
•Bigotry exists everywhere, including within my own heart, and yours too, if you’re honest.
•We have lost too many freedoms guaranteed in the Constitution and Bill of Rights.
•We are inundated with trivia: frivolous lawsuits, fake celebrities, vapid awards shows, fear mongering of all sorts, you name it. And it all seems designed to keep our minds off the real issues like New Orleans’ reconstruction, the war in Iraq, decent health insurance and health care in America, economic problems, add your own list here.
•People are not allowed to be who they are, black white, yellow, purple, straight, gay, old, young, Christian, Jewish, Muslim, Agnostic, Atheist, and whatever other categories available.

Be that as it may, we can regard the metaphoric glass as half empty or half full. There was a time in my life, particularly after my son Daniel was killed in a dreadful accident, that I thought the glass was empty, bone dry, and that it always would be. After years of therapy, after experiencing the love of more people than I ever deserved, I have come to see that my life is rich and full. It’s not perfect and I didn’t mean to imply that that last week.

In my own feeble way I celebrated the distance we have come in the United States, the stable inter-racial neighborhood where I now live, that at least some of the bigotry I grew up with no longer exists. What I got in response, however, were comments that I didn't set my sights high enough. Anonymous (!) said, “50% black and 50% white is just not that diverse - any hispanics, asians, gay couples, middle-easterners, singles? Yes, 50/50 is an American dream, for sure, but we should aim higher. We should aim for economic diversity in our neighborhoods. That's where the real discrimination lives: neighborhoods where everyone has a similar income. As long as the poor are concentrated in one area our children will never enjoy equal opportunities.”

I couldn’t agree more. But I can do only so much, and living in my middle class, racially mixed neighborhood is the best I can do at this point in my life. I’m not yet circling the metaphoric drain, but that point comes closer and closer. Again I point out that I am where I am in this life because of an accident of birth. I am fortunate to have been born into a college-educated, middle class family in the first half of the last century. I could just as easily have been born in Siberia and frozen to death under Stalin, been a victim of genocide in Rwanda or Kosovo, been born brain damaged or physically disabled – as could we all!

But I wasn’t. I work (in ways probably too subtle to have much effect) to make other’s lives better, and I celebrate the life I have.

Let me continue to be grateful. Don’t rain on my parade.