Happy-virus

This idea that we should strive to be happy at all times is a false narrative. It presents us with a fictional truth, usually in service of selling us something. Be it a lifestyle, a car, detergent, or love.

This idea that every moment should be filled by the elevated state that is happiness is just flat wrong.

The baseline should be contentment with spikes of happy and the very occasional unhappy moment.

A constant elevated state of happy is, I assure you, drug induced. Or a fabrication.

It’s all about the base state.

Baseline content with spikes of unhappy with very occasional spikes of happy would be considered unhappy.

Baseline unhappy with spikes of contentment and very occasional extreme spikes of happy would be considered miserable or depressed.

Baseline happy should be considered manic. Contact your/a therapist.

Baseline extremes both indicate something is seriously wrong. Both need to be addressed with changes.

The slow social descent into barbarism

The vast majority of activists are part time. They see an issue in their youth or after a major life change and they go full Don Quixote for a few years(at most). Then they stop. They move to other activities. Put their money and time towards other things.

Because change is hard. You can’t tear out an entrenched establishment by the roots with a few tugs. Its a colossal entity. It takes time and slow erosion.

You have to keep showing up. Keep donating. Keep voting. Keep speaking. It’s, frankly, exhausting. So rather than stop completely, I am asking that you pick two of the things. One has to be to keep voting. As long as they are pretending its a fair system, we keep voting. And for the other, pick one.

It took 50 years for the far right to pack the Supreme Court with politically motivated justices who are completely willing to forego precedent and overturn prior decisions. All while screaming about states rights. States rights being code for racist, homophobic, and misogynistic legislation and rulings.

States don’t need more rights. Broadly speaking, they have all the rights they need. Look at all the red states packing their legislatures and overturning voting rights for the last 50 years.
And look at all states who have legalized marijuana. Despite federal law.

Excluding rights from the citizenry is not a states rights issue. It’s a authoritarian issue.

Conservatives screaming about legislation from the bench are now eerily quiet, now that they are getting their way.

Hypocrisy. On the bench. In our legislatures. In our families.

Keep fighting. As much as you can. Don’t just give up. These are dark times. But eventually there is a light.

Whether that light be the dawn of a new day, or the bonfires of revolution.

Hope is a fragile thing

I sat down to write a poem
Finding its measure wanting
And its rhythm trite
I end up here once again
Pondering this lack of sight

I find my interest waining
Not in writing
So much as life

Never having planned to come this far
I find myself forced
Made to contemplate a future
One I was certain would never come

I have all of the pieces but not the puzzle
All of the dreams but not the hopes
And the world fades out
But nothing yet fades in

On the verge of destruction
Waiting for the groundswell
A last minute effort
To give that last push