What are one's "spirits?" Why must they be kept up, rather than let down? It is all a mystery, but the blogosphere had clues for me today. Some of my favorite bloggers are struggling with lagging spirits, while others seem to be soaring or at least decidedly upbeat in their posts. I guess it is one's "guard" that must be let down in order for better spirits to prevail.
On the other hand, there is a great deal of predictable worry about what can happen if you do relax. Right now much of the nation is on guard against what can happen when the Decider-in-Chief is turned loose, or the Vice-Decider. Our current psychological angst regards the future of Iran. We fear the administration may be determined to get it wrong again. We are also badly informed and deeply ambivalent as a people. As we learn more of the truth, we are becoming more and more concerned about what has already been done in the name of national security since the terrorist attacks of 9/11/01.
We wonder what kind of spiritual questions lurk in the news that the Pope will not be attending the dinner in his honor at the White House. In that same vein there is the nagging question of justice here on earth for misbehaving members of the Bush administration. Will there ever be justice of some sort for the downtrodden? As the year passes, many will be looking to turn the Republican party out of office, lock, stock and barrel.
We are also not "real clear" about what will happen to the Democratic party's presidential candidates in the next few weeks. We stay on guard because we are anxious that the party can remain united during the rest of the year, and into the difficult days following the inauguration.
Keeping spirits up is a daunting challenge for me personally, in the face of so many powerful negative emotions. I always look to Sunday, my day of rest, to restock my supply of positive feelings, often finding what I need from the good blogs in my reading list.
View my current slide show about the Bush years -- "Millennium" -- at the bottom of this column.
(Cross-posted at The Reaction.)
My “creativity and dreaming” post today is at Making Good Mondays.
Technorati tags: news news and politics politics 2008 election blogs
2 comments:
I'm absolutely astounded that I wasn't held up as an example of how crazy politics can make you.:) But then you probably knew politics had nothing to do with that.
And almost two hours later, I'm still on this one post - because all the links were so good I had to read them all!
Dan, you are a gentleman and a scholar, as the cliche goes, and one of my very most sane blog friends. Thanks for reading all the links, for being a willing subject, my friend, and for your kind words.
It was fun to do this one; it was an experiment to see what a "layered" piece of writing like this looks like. It is a bit rough, but something I may do again occasionally.
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