Where has our compassion gone?

I had written previously about misplaced priorities. Today, however, I have an even bigger concern - that of human compassion and decency. What inspired this was a man's suicide and the callous and heartless reactions to it that have been posted to a newspaper message board.

A little background is in order to fully understand this. In the town where I currently live and teach, we have had a bit of a drug scandal. Seems that a few of the custodians at the local high school were bilking the school prescription benefit plan by passing off illegal prescriptions for drugs such as Oxycontin. Seems that the custodians were obtaining hundreds of illegal pills and ultimately selling them on the street. Value - who knows, but an awful lot.

The employees were identified by police, and ultimately, a few of them were arrested. While the investigation has been continuing, one of the janitors, who was incidentally a former firefighter in town as well, hung himself. Who knows why. Maybe it was the pressure of this investigation. Maybe it was that he had failed at still another job. Maybe it was the thought of disappointing his family, including a young daughter. Maybe it was his drug problem.

Truth be told, we won't ever know because he hung himself and he didn't leave a note. Whether or he was guilty of anything, however, one must be pretty damned desparate to go ahead and hang yourself. And whether or not you are sympathetic to his plight, you have to admit that this is a tragedy - especially leaving a little girl all alone in the world.

The news breaks and, as has become the custom in the 21st century, "posters" who probably wouldn't have the guts to sign their own names to anything, let alone an internet post, start in with the most cruel, vile comments I have ever seen on a website. Comments that ranged from insults aimed at the deceased to comments about his family. Strong words and little thought.

And that is what has ticked me off. The internet, the ultimate free-speech tool, has turned us into a bunch of whiners, complainers and insult artists who can now hide behind the anonymity of a screen name and simply badmouth whomever and whatever we wish. With no consequences to speak of and with absolutely no care as to who sees the post or how many people they may be insulting.

What has happened to our society? Where is the compassion? The earth rocks and we immediately spring into action, sending millions of dollars to Haiti and offering all the assistance we can muster to help those poor helpless people and this demonstrates just how good people can be. And, almost simultaneously, a man takes his own life, shaming his family and leaving his daughter an orphan and rather than having even one sympathetic word, these jokers immediately start piling on with insults and derogatory comments. And we get to see just how bad people can be.

Why? Where have we gone wrong - and I say "we" intentionally. Because even if we don't participate in the action, somehow we must be condoning it, either by letting the posts go unchallenged or by subscribing to the paper that allows such crap, or by just turning a deaf ear.

I genuinely fear for what we are becoming. And I keep asking myself "why?"

Joe Must Go

As I watch the disaster that is the AFC championship game, I have come to the conclusion that until and unless Joe Namath either renounces Satan or is ultimately put into his grave - either by natural causes or with a wooden stake in his heart - the Jets will NEVER return to the Super Bowl. Bad karma just cannot be overcome by anything less than that.

Of course, as fate would have it, Joe went to Indianapolis today. Figures.

Hey Joe - you gotta go. Next time, please stay home.

41 years and counting.

Misplace priorities

If you are not yet convinced that we somehow have gotten our priorities all screwed up, just look at the events of the last 2 weeks or so.

The New York Giants, after a 5-0 start, suffer a tremendous defensive collapse, give up more points than probably any other Giants team in recent memory, finish at 8-8 and miss out on the playoffs.

On Christmas Day, some cretin from another country boards a plane in Amsterdam bound for Detroit with a bunch of explosive stuff sewn into his underwear. As the plane nears Detroit, he somehow manages to light his crotch on fire but, due to divine intervention (it WAS Christmas, after all), the alert response of crew and passengers, and a bad fuse, the idiot is captured, his crotch is put out and the lives of hundreds of passengers are saved.

Because of the epic collapse of a once-sterling defensive unit, the owner of the New York Football Giants is incredibly embarrassed. After he lets the fans know how pissed off he is, he promptly sees to it that the two individuals who are responsible for this tremendous error are fired, and so it is done. The defensive coordinator is dumped on Monday and the defensive line coach is sacked on Tuesday. That's called decisive action.

Because of the epic collapse of what we keep hoping is a strong national security system, the President of the United States is incredibly embarrassed. He admits that, while the intelligence (I use that word loosely) was there, no one bothered to tell anyone else - in other words, his defensive "coordinator" failed in his or her duties. It later comes out that the suspect in question was a known terrorist suspect who was on a series of lists and was under surveillance. Seems to me, though, that he was somehow NOT under surveillance on Christmas Day and, perhaps in spite of all the lists he was on the most important list he somehow WASN'T on was a "no fly" list.

And for this incredible breach of security, a collapse that would have had a lot more devastating effect than losing 8 football games and missing the playoffs, the President of the United States, who clearly outranks even the owner of the New York Giants, decided to fire nobody. Let me repeat - the President of the United States, after admitting an epic failure of the system, fired NOBODY.

Giants miss the playoffs and fire two. National Security misses a terrorist who almost blows up an airplane and all the innocent lives on it and we fire NOBODY.

Talk about screwed up priorities!!

Resolutions

So it's January 1 - the day when most everyone in the world sets about ot create some resolutions that will govern their lives for the next 365 days. Only thing is, they usually only last about three days before the impossibility of it all sets in and they are abandoned.

I've done that for years. Set impossible goals and then abandoned them just as quickly. I even created a list of resolutions for this year. My list went something like this.

1. Workout every day. I had been diligent about working out daily for quite a while last year - that is until September rolled around, school started and I got lazy. So I laid off "for just a few days", I said. A few days became a few weeks. Then a few months. So here I am, on the first day of 2010, thinking to myself that this should be an easy resolution. After all, haven't I been working out all last week?

2. Clean my office (or at least my desk) on a weekly basis. Again, this seems like a no-brainer. My desk does get away from me, quite often. I've been trying to do this for the longest time, and I had a pretty good streak going back in November. Seems like this should be easy to keep. What's once a week?

3. Learn to cook. Seems I have always been lucky enough to have someone around who enjoyed cooking for me. My mother. My college roommate. My wife. But lately, I was thinking that maybe learning to cook might not be a bad thing. It might actually be fun. I like watching the Food Network - what's the next logical extension - actually doing it. And maybe if I helped a little more in the kitchen . . . .why not?

4. Ride my bike more often. Seems like the "going green" thing would necessitate this. That and the fact that, come May we will be a four-driver in a two-car household. And it would also help with #1.

5. Write more regularly. I mean, I do fancy myself as a writer. And I do have a blog. And I do teach for a living, including teaching writing. And I could use some extra money. And I should also stop starting so many sentences with "and."

Wash the car more often. Straighten my bedroom regularly. Learn a foreign language. Read all the books on my nightstand. The list became endless.

And as I went further and further down the list, I realized that there was NO WAY in hell that I was going to stick to these. Sure, I would probably work out more often, but daily? I was already making excuses for that one. And the cooking thing - seemed like a good idea, but unless you can make an entire dinner in the microwave and the toaster oven, realistically speaking, that was also going down in flames.

The more I thought about it, the more I realized that the reason none of us ever stick to our New Year's resolutions is because they are too regimented. They are always intended to get you to do things more often, or more regularly, or better than last year. And the reality of it is that if you really wanted to do things more regularly, or often, or better then you just would! You wouldn't need some list that you put together in a drunken stupor on December 31 to tell you what to do.

No, resolutions were not for me. Not this year. Not again. So I pitched the list, dragged myself to the shower and as the water streamed down, I tried to turn off all thoughts of improving my sorry self in 2010.

And then it hit me - the perfect resolution. One that I know I can fulfill and that would not only benefit me, but maybe all that I come in contact with over the next 365 days. And here it is:

Just live!

As in "just live your life." Live it the best you can. If you want to sing in the shower, then sing. Want to read more, then read. Enjoyed that experiment in the kitchen, then do it again.

Write in the blog. Or don't today. Get up and workout for 30 minutes, or 60 minutes, or maybe only 15 minutes. Play hockey on Tuesdays and watch basketball on Fridays, or vice versa. Go to the movies once in a while.

Clean the damned office so you can find the top of the desk - maybe not each week, but maybe more often than last year. Dust off the bike when the weather gets better and ride it - even if only for a few minutes.

That was my resolutions - just live. But really live.

Live your life. Don't just sit there making lists because lists never did a damned thing except waste paper, ink and time. Be in the moment more often. Don't just READ about experiences - experience them!

So that's my resolution for this year. I intend to "live" more. And maybe, if I live more, those around me will learn to live more too. And maybe, just maybe, I can finally work on no starting as many sentences with "and."