THESE ARE DARK TIMES
Sometimes I say that in jest but lately, I feel this…weight of sadness about me regarding just what is happening.
This could be because I tend to internalize things that happen in the outside world. It isn’t so much that it affects me personally in any type of offense but I can’t simply walk away, mentally, from the injustices that happen around me.
Take for example the emergency contraception issue. Sigh. I just sighed, outwardly, because I feel exhausted thinking about the many “bullet points” of how incredibly inappropriate and unacceptable it is for any person to deny a woman emergency contraception…and the thing is, I used to be a union organizer, I am well aware of the rights that workers have, regardless of whether it’s a white or blue collar job. That doesn’t excuse the behavior of pharmacists…we don’t live in a country, nor do they work in a sector, that has established a moral code of conduct for on the job experiences. I feel as though we are a country that largely takes for granted the true rights we have out of fear, but obsesses over the rights that the mass population has taken control of, so fear and uncertainty do not block them as they do the other, less publicized rights. Or maybe what I am trying to say is none of these rights may be even established, or if they are somehow discernable within the Bill of Rights, they are largely exaggerated or misinterpreted and taken out of context.
In what reality does a pharmacist get to stop doing his or her job because of their moral obligation?
In what reality does a President get to appoint to the UN a man who feels it is his job to change and “better” it, when this country a) has refused to even acknowledge the stance the UN respectfully inhabits and b) believes it to be a country that can usurp the power and respects of the international community at large?
There are so many more issues that I hear about, read about, think about, talk about, that I wish I could write about but its just…this exhaustion coupled with sadness.
Or, maybe the problem is how compromised I feel; this growth, this development into adulthood. No longer a blind idealist, not yet a fearful and experienced adult, but this wishy washy middle ground where the echoes of my “old” self and “old” political ideology is colliding with the reality of age.
And yet that cliché, of realizing age and experiences do shade the sunny idealism that youth nurtures, bothers me still. But I can’t box myself into a corner and claim to be able to accurately see the dimensions of the entire room, which makes it all the harder to claim a personal position with a realistic objectivism. Is that even possible?
…and the beat goes on.
Sometimes I say that in jest but lately, I feel this…weight of sadness about me regarding just what is happening.
This could be because I tend to internalize things that happen in the outside world. It isn’t so much that it affects me personally in any type of offense but I can’t simply walk away, mentally, from the injustices that happen around me.
Take for example the emergency contraception issue. Sigh. I just sighed, outwardly, because I feel exhausted thinking about the many “bullet points” of how incredibly inappropriate and unacceptable it is for any person to deny a woman emergency contraception…and the thing is, I used to be a union organizer, I am well aware of the rights that workers have, regardless of whether it’s a white or blue collar job. That doesn’t excuse the behavior of pharmacists…we don’t live in a country, nor do they work in a sector, that has established a moral code of conduct for on the job experiences. I feel as though we are a country that largely takes for granted the true rights we have out of fear, but obsesses over the rights that the mass population has taken control of, so fear and uncertainty do not block them as they do the other, less publicized rights. Or maybe what I am trying to say is none of these rights may be even established, or if they are somehow discernable within the Bill of Rights, they are largely exaggerated or misinterpreted and taken out of context.
In what reality does a pharmacist get to stop doing his or her job because of their moral obligation?
In what reality does a President get to appoint to the UN a man who feels it is his job to change and “better” it, when this country a) has refused to even acknowledge the stance the UN respectfully inhabits and b) believes it to be a country that can usurp the power and respects of the international community at large?
There are so many more issues that I hear about, read about, think about, talk about, that I wish I could write about but its just…this exhaustion coupled with sadness.
Or, maybe the problem is how compromised I feel; this growth, this development into adulthood. No longer a blind idealist, not yet a fearful and experienced adult, but this wishy washy middle ground where the echoes of my “old” self and “old” political ideology is colliding with the reality of age.
And yet that cliché, of realizing age and experiences do shade the sunny idealism that youth nurtures, bothers me still. But I can’t box myself into a corner and claim to be able to accurately see the dimensions of the entire room, which makes it all the harder to claim a personal position with a realistic objectivism. Is that even possible?
…and the beat goes on.