Your Dying Spouse 374 - Caregiving For Our Country {FMF/#write31days}

This is not a post I wanted to write. But I sort of had to, because I sort of still give a damn. (And it serves for both Five Minute Friday and #write31days.)

Well, it does look like the USA needs some caregiving. After Las Vegas and Charlottesville and an absolute torrent of online incivility, we're battered and bruised and bleeding.

There's a story here, and it's one no one wants to hear. (STORY is the FMF prompt.)

We have a big problem here, and it's not the alt-right or Antifa or guns or Black Lives Matter.

Las Vegas will be forgotten in a week, as The Voice blind auditions rumble on, and we plan our holiday parties. Fifty-eight people dead is really just a statistic unless you knew one of them. After all, we lose the same number every day on our roads, from DUI and texting-while-driving.

Who's mourning them?

Only their close circle...for the rest of us, it's better you than me, and hey...where's the remote?

Yeah, we have a problem. The problem lies in our collective soul, and it has a name.

Alienation.

We’ve become a society of angry online trolls who in large measure define ourselves and our worth by the depth of our vindictive rage.

It’s bee a long time coming. Robert Putnam pointed out in his masterful ‘Bowling Alone’ that disengagement from personal intercourse has been going on since the 50s, witnessed by a decline in the prominence of social organizations both religious and secular…including bowling leagues.

And this was before cell phones and more advanced personal electronic devices hit it big. Technology has only hastened fragmentation. We're a nation of niches, served and cossetted to fulfill our specific needs and impulses.

And in that, we no longer have to fit into a community. We can draw up a life plan that's just for us, and shared effort's become something quaint.

Lack of community begets alienation, which in turn begets a spiritual numbness, turning life into an existential echo-chamber.

And at the end, the only thing that can still reach a frozen heart is anger…for real causes, for the taken-on causes of others, or, as you put it, for its own dark sake, because it’s the only grudging warmth left in a universe gone nihilistically cold.

Our country's sick, all right, and it may be dying. How can we become the caregivers for a nation, to give it some hope of recovery? Is there anything that we, as individuals, can do?

Sure there is. Set an example. We need leaders, so get out there and lead. Set the example. Become the change, and reach for the miracle, because we sure need one.

• Walk away from the online angries. You won't change their minds through engagement, but they can darken your heart. Walk away from engagement even if they're friends, or family.
• Seek out inspiring and uplifting stuff to post. Default to the positive.
• Don't fight other people's wars. Be supportive, but if it's not your fight, stay in the background.
• Purge your vocabulary of current angry buzzwords. Resolve never to mention things like microaggression (if you can figure out what it is).
• Get out on the porch. Turn off Netflix, pick up a CD player (no headphones allowed), make a pitcher of lemonade, and sit on the porch. Read or sketch or play a board game, or even solitaire (with REAL playing cards, no cell phones allowed). People in your neighbourhood will think you a loon, and then you'll notice them furtively doing the same thing. Before you know it there will be visiting back and forth, and then...a block party. (If you don't have a porch, improvise. Use your garage, door open. Or your driveway, with an umbrella stand and a couple of beach chairs. Just get out there.
• Get involved in something that brings you into regular contact with other people...specifically at the expense of your online presence. 
• Don't apologise for being white, or being Christian, or being well-off. All that does is feed the self-justification of those who want to feel sorry for themselves, or who want to blame who you are for what they are not.

What can you add?

The musical accompaniment is from Maureen McGovern, singing The Morning After. Bet you haven't heard this is awhile!

My #write31days posts so far are:

October 1 - Worship For Caregivers

October 2 - Talk To A Caregiver

October 3 -  Create A Caregiver Haven

October 4 - A Caregiver's Raw Hope

October 5 - A Caregiver's Trust
October 7 - Caregiver, Don't Hold Too Tight

I do ask that you be patient with my slow replies to your comments (which we treasure). I'm trying to stay caught up.

Still hoping to get the new and improved version of Blessed Are The Pure Of Heart up and running in the near future. Just haven't had the energy to do it yet...but if you would like to read it, please say so in your comment and I'd be glad to send you a PDF (which should fit your Kindle).

I have another blog, "Starting The Day With Grace". The focus is a grace quote from someone you might not expect (like, say Mick Jagger) and a short commentary. I hope you'll join me.

Marley update... been moved to a sanctuary, and Bay County will revise their 'dangerous dog' codes.

WE MADE A DIFFERENCE!

And marley has a Facebook page! Please drop by to see how happy he is today.

If you can, please do leave a comment. I am trying to answer all, and I am failing, but please know this - I read and treasure each one.

Below are my recent releases on Kindle -please excuse their presence in the body of the blog. I haven't the energy to get them up as 'buttons' in the sidebar. You can click on the covers to go to the Amazon links.