Month: August 2018

We have breaking news, this just in.….We are all going to die. Physical and emotional pain will happen to all of us. Some days are better than others. And truth isn’t truth.  I must confess that I get a little thrill or trepidation when I hear the announcement  We have breaking news.… I am a news junkie and I am speaking literally not figuratively!  I can ride the gym recumbent bike hard if I am focused on MSNBC on TV or on my phone. Sweat pours off me as I am focused on how f-upped the world is. I am incredibly biased against Trump and am very over-invested in his political ruin. There is a lot of breaking news about Trump. I know because I pay close attention.

Should I be worried about my news addiction and my obsession with the current, sad state of U.S. politics.?  I am a little bit worried or I would not even be asking the question. When I hear from my friends who say they binge watched a series on Net Flix,I feel better, but then I remember they did use the word “binge”and I realize that I binge on the news. I am insatiable for current political news so I am acutely uncomfortable if I don’t have access to it. What’s the deal?

If my focus is on the news, what am I not paying attention to? My mind is filled with news bites and headlines so it’s too crowded for much else. What is my emotevation——what emotion motivates me to bury my head in the news feed? Fear is a primary motivator for me, so knowledge, or current news is power over fear. Nothing happens in the Trump Administration that I don’t know about. I am informed, an expert, but I can still be surprised, shocked and disgusted by the news. There is simply no way to insulate and isolate myself from the “bad news” in my life. Breaking news can break my heart: my husband dies or my sisters get cancer, and I am way past the halfway point in my life. My dreams of being a famous author or a dancer are old news now. 

What if “breaking news” are also the moments when life shows me something new or I am surprised by beauty or joy? Am I looking for good news or bad news? This morning I saw a hummingbird flitting around a bush, breaking news for me and it was good news. I enjoyed the sight and felt gratitude for seeing the hummingbird. Then there was a cute dog to see, a smile on a friendly face and a nice breeze—all news to me. When I was a young girl I used to pretend that I was a newscaster, I had a desk and looked into the “camera” to report the news. Even then I felt the power of news. I wanted the truth to be told, to expose the lies, to talk about heroes and storms. Today I still want to know “What’s going on?”

My family and friends love to play Zilch, a dice game.  Zilch is 99% luck and 1% strategy. Know when to hold em, know when to fold em; win big…or lose big. Conservative players take “a bird in the hand”, and others willing to take bigger risks, “go for it”. Either way the dice roll is what you get. You can pray, put ju-ju on the dice and rub your good luck piece, but in the end it is just dumb luck.  What is dumb luck?  :the way in which something good happens completely by chance, without being planned or deserved.  So the part of this definition that really pisses me off is “without being planned or deserved.”  Basically I can’t earn dumb luck; I can’t control my way to dumb luck, and a mass murderer is just as likely to experience dumb luck as I am. Is this right? But wait, is dumb luck always “good” luck? Joe just happened to be standing under the tree when lighting struck the tree and he was killed. This  “completely by chance, without being planned or deserved” sad occurrence seems just as much dumb luck as hitting the jackpot in Vegas, of course with vastly different outcomes. 

Am I just playing with words again? This notion of good luck and bad luck feels very central to my angst at the moment. I tried very, very hard to bring some justice to my good friend who has been wronged by our HOA Board. Orson Welles said: Nobody gets justice, people only get good luck or bad luck.  My cynicism says my friend has the bad luck to live in an HOA where the Board has an adversarial approach to their neighbors. She did not cause the damage to her home, but she has the bad luck to face an unethical board. She had the bad luck to have a pipe the HOA is responsible for leak for a long time inside a wall, and eventually cause enough damage that mitigation required her kitchen be gutted. This after she asked them repeatedly to check the pipe because she smelled mildew and moldy smell in her cabinet. It seems there is no justice for her and nothing but bad luck.  If Mr Welles is right that nobody gets justice why not just give up and let the chips fall where they may. If Lady Luck is random is there any reason to seek influence with her?

Bad things do happen to good people, and suffering, destruction and distress are the result of  random tragedies. Hiding in your house with a blanket over your head does not guarantee that tragedy will not find you. The roof could collapse or an earthquake could rock your safe world. Do we make our own luck? If the universe is just a collection of random events, then we are not that powerful.  Maybe we can work hard to be in a place that can better allow good things to come into our lives. Maybe.  I think I may need to accept that uncertainty, luck and randomness are a fact of life, but I do have control over a very important variable: my attitude. I can choose to view negative events as catastrophes or as learning experiences. This sounds a bit hollow to me right now. I am not really sure if I could answer “Yes” to Dirty Harry’s question “Do you feel lucky?”

In the meantime these 2 quotes gave me a chuckle and I am so lucky I can still laugh!

Depend on the rabbit’s foot if you will, but remember it didn’t work for the rabbit.  R.E. Shay

I believe in luck: how else can you explain the success of those you dislike?  Jean Cocteau