Reflections of a Middle-Aged Woman

Yes, according to Gail Sheehy, the 60’s are the new middle age.  That aside, what I want to reflect on here is what happened to that wide-eyed, twenty-something young woman I used to be who protested the war in Vietnam and marched for civil rights and actually believed that people could change the world for the better? When did I stop believing the world was full of promise and hope?  Did I want to become this cynical? No, I did not! But here I am just the same.

I believe in God.  I clutch onto that belief with a death grip because it is the only path I see that still leads to wonder.  Without wonder life is boring, riddled with anxieties and fears and disappointments.  “All is futile,” Solomon tells us, “a chasing after the wind.”  Remember back to childhood when everything was new?   “Look,” my grandson cried out excitedly when he was three from his car seat looking out the window, “a red car!”  A few seconds later, “Look,”  just as excitedly, “a cow! “  That phase passes all too quickly.  We become jaded.  But there is still wonder in the world, you just have to look harder for it.  My husband and I just returned from a trip to the Cotswold’s in England.  I felt a sense of wonder driving along one-tract country roads past bucolic scenes of green rolling hills dotted with sheep grazing.  It was like a slice of heaven.   “To see a world in a grain of sand, a heaven in a wildflower” William Blake says. 

Back in my “normal” life after our all too brief idyllic vacation, I was assaulted with the news of the world- and none of it good of course.  Good news doesn’t sell so we rarely hear about it.  In the weeks after we returned a violent freak storm hit shutting down power to thousands in our city in the middle of one of the worst heat waves, gas prices reached another all-time high, new information on the Penn State child molestation case against Sandusky had come to light, Iran was making threats again, the national debt was still climbing and our politicians were still running smear campaigns against each other.  

I know it’s an election year, but does that mean all other problems go on hold while we focus on hidden bank accounts and birth certificates?  When did American politics sink to this appalling level?  When did candidate debates revolve around character assassination instead of their respective plans for running the country?  That’s what I want to hear.  I could care less about the rest of it.  Since when did a candidate’s morals mean so much to us anyway?  Was there ever a bigger womanizer than JFK?  Yet he’s a national icon.  The Kennedys are our version of American royalty.  Even the campaign ads are an insult to our intelligence.  Here’s a my hypothetical example of the childish depths our leaders have sunk to:  A candidate is making a speech at a rally and says something like, “I hate American’s who lie and cheat and think they are above the law.  If I’m elected I will change that!”  The opposition then runs an ad that plays only a small portion of that speech taken out of context, like “I hate Americans.” The ad then goes on to say, “Why would you elect a President who feels this way about his fellow Americans?”  There’s more and more of this trickery going on, truth is now so elusive in politics that it is virtually nonexistent.  

Here’s what really bugs me – why does anyone believe that a politian of any ilk who is running for office, whether Republican or Democrat, presidential candidate, congressman or senator, speaks the truth?  Is there even one naïve person out there over the age of ten who really believes that?  And if not, why in hell aren’t we protesting the lies and deceptions coming from both sides?  We are more concerned with loyalty to a particular party or ideology than demanding changes be made in the entire system

Isn’t that what this president campaigned on- hope and change?  Why do I look around and still see business as usual in Washington?  “Let’s pass the healthcare bill and then read it,” our speaker of the house tells us.

The U.S. Supreme Court, by the admission of several members, failed to read the law before ruling on it. Give me a break! This is NOT about liberalism versus capitalism. It’s about blatant corruption on every level. Our system of government is broken! It has been for a long time. When are we going to wake up and do something about it? Even in the unlikely event that someone with character is elected to office, once they get to Washington D.C. they get swept up in the graft and greed and the buying and selling of favors. It’s like a modern day Babylon. It needs to be taken down and rebuilt from the bottom up. And therein lies the root cause of my cynicism. I don’t believe people in general in our society today care enough to do anything about it. They are more concerned with making their own life more comfortable. They are too busy to be concerned with what’s going on somewhere else. They would rather just turn on the news and delude themselves that the media is actually telling them the truth. Does anyone really believe in the fairy tale of “fair and balanced” news reporting anymore? People today are like those sheep we saw in the Cotswold’s, following whomever says what they want to hear, ignoring the obvious evidence that we as a country are sliding further and further into ruin.

If only I could believe again in the power of a protest march.  But alas, I do not.  So I hold out for wonder.  I believe it is there if we but have eyes to see it. And it keeps me going when I do.