Perspective

And its loss

I think about what’s important in life, and a lot of things come to mind. Family. Friends. A home. Something meaningful to occupy our time. A legacy. Here in the West anyway, the land.

Photo by Benjamin Davies on Unsplash

I can’t help but believe that it’s like that for most people.

Every day, around noon, a group of retired folks gather around a great big table at the Tavern we frequent for lunch. Sometimes the group is a little bigger, or a little smaller, but always it is there. It’s pretty obvious what’s important to the people who make up that group. Friendship, camaraderie, and I imagine an opportunity to check up on each other, to make sure that no one has fallen and broken a hip.

These too are undoubtedly the important things in life.

I think that when I was a younger man, politics hadn’t invaded every part of our lives. The things actually important in life were primary in people’s thoughts. This isn’t to say that people didn’t have political disagreements, for surely they did. (My mother after all voted for Jimmy Carter to the consternation of my entire extended family.)

But I think that people largely agreed about what the country needed. Good jobs for all, reasonable safety protections for workers, the ability for working adults to have kids, buy a house, and a car or two. The ability to retire with dignity. A defense sufficient for the protection of our nation, and those weaker than us. A bit of entertainment and time away.

The political disagreements weren’t about what was important, rather about how to best achieve those goals.

And the guy across the street was viewed as misguided if he supported the wrong guy for public office, not as evil.

But, that’s changed now. Over a few short years we have done away with all political norms. Started flirting with communism. Experienced political violence. Looked for candidates on the fringes instead of in the middle. Embraced strongmen over the rule of law.

And I think we have to ask why that is. Certainly the 24/7 news cycle contributed, as has social media and the move of discourse from the real world to the online one.

It goes beyond that. People in this country make a living by inflaming division now. Heck, they get rich doing so. Foreign governments too, benefit from, and do, stoke the fires of hatred over the issues of the day. They do this in order to weaken our nation.

And too often we fall for this nonsense.

Because we tend to forget what’s actually important in this life. Family, friends, a home, the land, a legacy.

I remember, not that long ago, when political talk was largely about leaving a world in which our children and our grandchildren have more opportunities than we ourselves had.

How long has it been since elected officials talked in such a way?

Now it’s all about our side defeating the other side as the nation attempts to manage its decline.

It can be fun, and exciting, a huge rush really, to have a team, and to watch our team crush it’s opponents. Go Seahawks! But life isn’t a football game. Life has much more important things. Family, friends, purpose, meaning, a home, the land, honor.

Far too many of us have lost this perspective. We’ve embraced political teams, with their charismatic captains, and their odd social and economic theories, instead of remembering what is important. Good jobs. Law and order. The ability to raise children and own a home.

We can fix it.

Or we can say that America’s best years are behind her.

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