“Depression is feeling like you’ve lost something but having no clue when or where you last had it. Then one day you realize what you lost is yourself.” —Unknown
On the heels of my New Year’s resolution we come upon a few stories that have circulated over the past month. My response to these stories used to be anger. I would rant and rave about this and that to my friends. I suppose I may do some of that, but the reality is that I am just more sad than anything. There is a feeling of hopelessness that is just overwhelming.
The first story involves the all too familiar. There was yet another mass shooting this weekend involving an AR-15. So, why the sadness? Obviously any senseless and arbitrary loss of life is sad. If you aren’t sad then you are probably angry. If you are neither of those things then your humanity is slowly slipping away.
Of course, that’s not why I am sad. I’m sad because we will go through the cycle of thoughts and prayers, ringing of garments over easy access to guns, the ensuing arguments over what AR stands for in the AR-15 and whether that even matters in the question of whether anyone should own one. We will argue about whether it’s guns or mental health and of course those that argue mental health will offer absolutely zero ideas of what to do about it. Someone else will say we shouldn’t politicize this tragedy and that the time to address these things is some undeterminable time in the future. We will wait several weeks and then there will be another one almost like it.
The second story that brings sadness is the continued arguments over COVID treatment and vaccines. At this point, it is not an argument I want to participate in. Are these vaccines dangerous? Ineffective? Are the over the counter or prescribed treatments effective? These are all important questions and they are questions I don’t have answers for. I’m not a medical doctor.
It is the fact that these things are being debated in political circles at all that is the depressing thing. We have medical experts. There is a learning curve for them just like there is for us in our chosen profession. As they learn more, treatment improves. It is the same cycle for any other disease we have discovered. Politicizing science is just so damned depressing.
Finally, we get to the George Santos/Matt Gaetz/The Former Guy portion of the proceedings. I suppose we can throw in the Bidens just for fun. At this point, this shouldn’t be difficult. If you committed a crime you should go to jail. That includes the Bidens. As we know, there is no proof of a crime on their part, but that’s usually when these things break down. In these other cases we know full well. In some cases there are four or five different jurisdictions standing around and wondering if someone else will relieve them of their burden. They just hope that some court, some prosecuting attorney, or the grim reaper himself will just fix it.
Add these all up and you can hopefully see why the anger and outrage has shifted to depression. Things just seem to be getting worse. Things just seem to be hopeless. The only solution/advice I have is that paying attention only feeds the hopelessness. Maybe it is time to unplug for awhile.
halloffameindex 