Life Is Like a Soap Opera

We are accustomed to hearing stories that have a beginning, a middle, and an end. In the beginning, life is good and everybody is happy. In the middle, a problem arises, and the problem is resolved at the end, leaving everybody happy again. That is, unless the story is a tragedy, in which case the problem just gets worse and worse and somebody dies at the end. Real life is a little different.  Everybody starts out unhappy, which is why little babies cry a lot. Life generally gets better as we grow older, until we pass a certain point, and then it's all downhill from there. It's not a steady downhill slide though, there are peaks and valleys along the way, which fosters the illusion that things are improving for awhile. This illusion keeps us going and gets us through the next downturn because we believe it's only temporary. Eventually, there are no more peaks to get us through the valleys, and then we die. In a manner of speaking, then, life is a tragedy but, in another manner of speaking, life is like a soap opera. Each day is but another episode in the continuing saga. We know that the show will be cancelled someday, but we can't worry about that because we need to focus our energy on the problem at hand. We know that, as soon as one problem is resolved, another one will jump up to take its place. No use worrying about that either, we have to just keep putting one foot ahead of another until they pull the plug on us.

I guess I got off on a tangent there. The point I was trying to make is that, whatever happens, it's not the end of the world, unless it really is the end of the world, in which case there is nothing we can do about it anyway. Presidents come and presidents go, but we're still here for now and, when we are no longer here, we won't care who is president.

I guess what started me on this track was Old Dog's statement about everything the government does being a failure. I used to say that too, until Uncle Ken set me straight on it some time ago. Just because there are still poor people after 50 years of fighting poverty is no reason to quit fighting poverty. Governments have been fighting crime much longer than that, and the fact that there is still crime in the world doesn't mean they failed, it just means that they're not done yet. Would there be less crime if they shut down all the police forces? Not bloody likely!

That said, I do agree with Old Dog that just throwing money at a problem is not likely to solve it. There needs to be a plan, and everybody involved needs to follow the plan because no plan will work if people don't do it. If they do it and it still doesn't work, then we need to change plan, but we won't know that we need to change the plan if nobody follows the plan. So how do we get everybody to follow the plan? If I knew that, then I would be running for president.