Same Shit, Different Day

My brain is normally abuzz with all sorts of thoughts. Some of the more creative two-leggeds (a Native American phrase not meant to ostracize people with less than two limbs but to distinguish us from animals) spew forth countless inventions and creative designs, most of which are never produced in the real world. I only have one genius invention rattling around my brain and anyway, no technology on the planet comes close to making it possible. Otherwise, my thoughts tend to run more in the philosophical vein than in the production vein.

There are so many things to write about, talk about, think about, but today the only thing that comes to me is something a friend of mine once said when asked how she was faring: "Same shit, different day."

Perhaps my malaise is prompted by the news that House Republicans have voted to gut Obamacare of funding, an insurance plan that is the only hope for people like me and countless others who are in robust health but have a history of a toenail fungus or some such threatening icky thing. And heaven help the truly sick or injured ones.

Or perhaps my unenthusiastic reaction upon leaving dreamland is due to the California sun disappearing behind a mist of gray fog, a boon to overheated Angelenos and their plant friends but a curse on my mood. 

Or the news that a lady in New York took off two days of work to stand in line for fourteen hours outside the Apple Megastore to get the new iPhone 5s, only to find out that they were fresh out of her fetish. Undaunted, she left for another Apple store location, promising to sleep for a few days after her ordeal was over. Duh, that means four missed days of work. Let's hope her job isn't airport security at JKF.

Has the world gotten even crazier today than it was yesterday?

Germane to this question is an answer given by a Tibetan lama during one of his talks in the USA. He had been meditating in a cave for over twelve years in the depths of Tibet when a villager interrupted his life-style to tell him the Chinese were coming for him shortly. He had been recognized as an incarnation of a great lama at the age of five and when the Chinese got word of it, they nailed his little hands to a wooden school desk. Having had this childhood experience, he understood that being reacquainted with the invaders would not be a good thing and escaped over the mountains into India, a country that welcomes Tibetan refugees.

During his teaching, a member of the audience remarked that things were getting worse and worse every day in this age of Kali Yuga (the Dark Ages in Americanese). The lama retorted that turmoil, strife, war, injustice, murder, theft, torture, the annhiliation of entire cultures has always been happening somewhere on this planet. 

Plus les choses changent, plus elles restent pareilles - translated as - "same shit, different day." Sounds more elegant in French but us Americans get right to the point, except when we don't.

Expectations are a dangerous thing, so lest anyone think that the world is all bad, or the world is all good, or the world is sometimes good and sometimes bad, one things is for sure. Having a pre-ordered menu for what life is meant to serve us is a recipe for disappointment that leaves a bad taste in the mouth.

Better to wake up, in every sense of the word, to possibility of the moment. Then who knows what the day might bring? It's up to us to choose.