michael.havard's blog

With all the conflict in my life lately I'm beginning to seriously wonder if the me I want to be is an impossibility. Is it simply time to put away childish things, put on my big boy pants, and face the reality that dreams are dreams and not to be achieved, but merely dreamed? I don't know for sure, but it's certainly looking that way.

There are days like today that I start out my day feeling good, calm, and clear only to realize later that I've wandered into a mine field. What's worse is that it's a mine field that I created, every mine is my own personal bomb, lovingly laid by my own hand, spoken with my own mouth, put just enough below the surface to destroy me if I don't tread gingerly. Step... Step.... Click... BOOOM!!!!

Heard an interesting spin on "keep your friends close, keep your enemies closer" today. "I'd rather they were in here pissing out, than out there pissing in."

I can't sleep! I won't sleep! I'm worried that if I go to sleep now that this worry will become a part of me, that I'll be stuck with this sense of trepidation FOREVER!

My brain says "Look, let's just reason our way through this. Let's pull out the playbook of things that help; some reading, a movie, maybe a video game, go outside get some fresh air, imagine you're on a beach..." Meanwhile some other part of my brain, the "heart" part, is freaking the FUCK OUT!

Here's why the broccoli argument during the Supreme Court questioning is specious. First, it wasn't meant to answer an actual question. It was meant to point to the "slippery slope." The wise and reasoned judges could have easily ascertained why health insurance isn't like a mandate on broccoli. Therefore it was merely a tool to impress upon people a specific point of view, versus a means of eliciting any real answer that the judge needed.

There are some in this country that claim we are a Christian nation, founded on Christian ideal, by Christian men and women. Then, almost in the same breath, they decry programs that feed the hungry and offer care for the weak as "over-reaching". Their claim is that these programs should be left to the church and to the good Christian men and women of this land.

Lately I've been getting frustrated with statements by citizens about our rights. Statements like "well our Constitutions gives us the right to..." That's a blatently ignorant. The U.S. Constitution does not grant or enumerate individual rights. Where necessary it specifies them. This happens in order to define how the government is limited, not in order to detail how an individual is allowed to exercise their rights. One exception to this might be when we specify limitations of one groups rights in order to protect either another groups rights or an individuals rights.

Some in the religious/political community would like us to believe that the U.S. was founded as a Christian nation. Their primary claim being that the differences between Christian denominations and sects, English Protestants, French Protestants, Roman Catholics, Orthodox Catholics, Jesuits, Mennonites, and Lutherans, was merely a matter minor procedural differences. After all, they all worshiped the same big "G" God.

I often find an amazing amount of depth in what others might consider trite movie quotes. It's like a little bit of inadvertent zen... or is it, I wonder... I mean writers are certainly smart, at least some of them. Plus one would assume that if they are smart writers that they get inspiration by also being smart readers. So some philosophy must pass through their filter now and again. Right?

In the midst of a down economy, airline bankruptcies, skyrocketing CEO pay (up 37% for the year), flagging retail sales, ongoing partisanship in government, and what will prove to be a sucktacular election season I'm left wondering where the dreamers have gone. We were once a society of dreamers. Our families came here looking for better lives and endured amazing hardships to secure those lives. Sometimes this came at the cost of sacrificing themselves to the elements and losing other loved ones in the arduous journey.