The holidays are past and there is New Year’s Eve left, where those who had to hold their tongues at the dinner table can drink their stresses away, and those that couldn’t help themselves can reassure themselves that they were in the right. The turkey couldn’t stuff the mouths that couldn’t keep the peace fast enough.

The little jabs, and the nonchalant references, and our insistence upon commenting on that one post. We can’t even talk about pandemics. And the fear, and the fear-mongering. It’s all wrapped up in that forty-eight hour period we call Christmas.

Out on the lawns are Santa Clauses and crosses. There are empty lawns and the last of the political signs still standing in defiance. It seems we all have a point to make, and being holed up in our houses we cannot drive around boasting our bumper stickers in traffic. But the corporate machine rolls on, it just invades our homes now.

There is a divide between fear and the unfortunate. There are the empty slogans that boast “freedoms” and “rights”, and there are the enlightened ones that are teachers but have never been students. There is the ignorant and the stupid, and never the twain shall meet. The common theme is anger, and the common thread is fear.

The holidays are past, but the problems that we all have had to face, separate but together, remain. An answer seems impossible. A solution seems unimaginable. Certainty is inevitable. And yet in the grey corners when the shouting stops and the high horse is simply the pony that it is, and we we look past our tribes and realize that none of this is necessary can we say that we may have been wrong, but we were trying to do right?

Our bikes were down under in the parking garage and we wandered down to search for answers among the cars and campers that were stuffed efficiently in the huge open, metal maw of the ship.  Perhaps the big, overland trucks were more attuned to us and our mode of travel than were the cars?  Nomadic with destinations changing daily. 

We could picture the huge trucks drinking beer with their rowdy pals while the campers cowered and said nothing.  Perhaps the white BMW’s and Audi’s conversed, smoking silver-tipped cigarettes while the Volkswagens stared lackadaisically into the unknown, uninterested in anything.  Perhaps somewhere in the steel-tubing and sprockets of the few bicycles parked among the countless cars, campers and trucks, more pleasing, more thoughtful conversations were taking place like their ability to sneak into the back doors of towns silently and take in unnoticed worlds. 

Being invisible on roadways and how dangerous it sometimes was, but most of the time reminding each other how refreshing, having to notice the world around them, being forced to be self-aware and aware of their surroundings, being able to taste the air and feel every bump and every temperature change.  Perhaps they chatted about the ability to not be involved and silently roll out just as secretly as they rolled in. 

Maybe they were talking about how time slowed down, how they were not a beast on a road, but a ghost in the twilight, coming and going but always in limbo, blending with all of the worlds but belonging to none.  I turned over the sprocket just to be a part of their conversation.

Remember, it’s time to forget. It’s time to smile and understand. It’s time to soften up the unconscious frown and look up into the sky and admire the blues and pinks. It’s time to remember to notice the circular patterns in the tree limbs. It’s time to walk the dog. Tell someone you love that you love them. Know that they too are battling life one day a time.

The mornings are cold with just a little dewy ice on the grass, and the squirrels are always playing in the trees. The neighborhood is quiet, with just a little traffic noise in the background. It’s comforting. The houses are still asleep and the sun is peeking over the horizon, just a little. I like to remember these times, the cold on my face. The start of a new day.

Every meal cooked is an opportunity. Take the time to prepare food and give it the respect that it deserves. Cook because food is peaceful and the kitchen is welcoming. Take the pans out and listen to them clink on the counter. Take a look at the years of sauces and stews that have come to life and have left their marks. Remember each and every meal as if it were a child that has left your home.

Remember when you were young? Allow yourself to do such things. Play. Laugh. Take time to walk away from the memories that weigh heavy on your mind. Remember the time when memories were being made. They make us who we are. They are who we were. And the memories we make will give us reason to think, and to live another day.

Thinking the best of someone takes work, it takes trust. Something that we are programmed by evolution to do. To quote Malcolm Gladwell, we are trusting machines. Travel will teach you to, in fact, trust strangers and to recognize more often than not our fate is not in our own hands. Look around, our civilization is based upon the ability, our being trusting machines. Our economic system is based upon trust. Political norms are base upon trust. A civil society is based upon trust. It seems that we should never lock our doors. But we do.

And why is that, why do we lock our doors? The rhetorical question is easily answered by pointing out that there are people we cannot trust. People steal things. People lie. And so we lock our doors. We install camera doorbells and alarm systems in our houses. We come to call this normal, but it is not. We make it normal. Our trust machine is put into the background and we spend our lives looking over our shoulders.

People we love, our family, tells us that they support us, and yet…there is that sentence. Our families seem like loving and sympathetic people, but then why did they… We want to trust. We need to trust. We must trust others. But we must also adhere to truth. We must protect it and stand up for it. We must also realize that to trust we must lower our defenses and make ourselves vulnerable.

Both trust and truth are uncomfortable. But they are worth it. They are necessary, and they take courage to call a liar a liar, and a thief a thief. We must take it upon ourselves to do the work of being disliked at times, by someone all of the time. To trust we must be truthful and we must realize that others are not. To trust we must realize that we sometimes lie, and that others are truthful. It is not a game, but a philosophy of life. It is necessary for us to be happy and content. It is necessary for our survival.

Look around the world for the odd, the unusual, the few and far between. Look around for the special ones, the forgotten ones. Look in the darkened corners and burned out yards. Don’t pass them by, don’t turn away.

Think, for a minute, think about how little it would take and how much it would mean. Think about the smile on your face that would flower out of nothing, that would grow ever so slowly and blossom. Think of the comfort you could offer.

The world is what we make it, it is more than those that are blind to its beauty, it is greater than the short-sighted, and more precious than the cheapskates. There is enough, there is enough to go around. There is enough time to take from, to look into their eyes and show kindness.

Love is not enough but for the time we take to be kind to those that need it most.

The last four years have been difficult for any thinking person, for any person paying attention. It has not only been difficult because of the criminal intentions and activities of the Trump administration, but because of the seeming blindness to those intentions and activities by those around all of us, our fellow country men and women who cannot, or refuse to see the nature of the administration.

There is a blindness to such unadulterated adoration for such a blatantly bad person and the Republican party that continues to support him and what he stands for. And what does The Trump administration stand for, and the Republican party support? If their actions and rhetoric are considered, then it would seem that they stand for spite, revenge, hatred, fear, greed, and ignorance.

But there is more to it, there must be. There must be because there are those we love who seem blind to these human weaknesses, these frailties, these shortcomings. There must be because we cannot love those with such blackness in their hearts. It is not the politics, those within are blinded by their own stupidity and power lust, but those people, those in our lives? Those that we care about?

They must be lying, but they are not.

They must know they are mistaken, but they do not.

They must be blind to their mistakes, and we must not be mistaken about their blindness.

I went for a walk today with my dog and my wife. As we enjoyed the bright, blue skies and the sunshine warming my back, people said hello and smiled.

It is strange these days to see a smile. It is strange for many reasons. But I missed it nevertheless.

Maggie, my dog, is getting old and she was tired but the sun in her eyes still shown bright as she sniffed unseen interests and wagged her tail at the passing dogs on their walks.

Her happiness is not strange. She is happy all of the time, but I never get tired of seeing her content.

My wife is worried and I am no good at comforting her. I can only tell her to look up at the blue skies and watch as Maggie’s tail wags when she scratches her head.

It is strange these days to see a smile. It is strange for many reasons. But I miss it nevertheless.

Do not get mad. Go Vote.

Do not feel sorry for yourself. Go vote.

Do not make excuses or wonder how we got here. Go vote.

Don’t be afraid, although it is sad to say this. Go vote.

Do not be bullied or intimidated, or talked out of doing it. Go vote.

Disregard how you feel. Go vote.

Do not listen to the news, or others, or social media. Go vote.

Go vote like our future depends upon it.

It does. Go vote.