I wish I had remembered  when I was trying to convince a young grandniece that indeed not all people know enough to worry and that worrying is an advanced form of thinking.  How can you not worry when you have made babies and commitments?

But when you are unsure of your own survival, it is impossible to concern oneself about an Other, even a small Other.

I was always a worrier and to the Trendies, a negative.  Even as a child in grammar school,  I ran home when sirens screamed every time  knowing for sure my house was on fire and my mother dead.

Many people cannot make connections and cannot see the past having a bearing on the present and the future.  They cannot see the who they are is the result of  their history.  The only way they say to live life is in the moment.  They were convinced of the power of positive thinking on this but experience should reveal the possibilities of an action and its consequences.

They think bubbly is lost when consequences are considered because making informed decisions spoils the fun.  Perhaps so.  Perhaps the idea of fun considers  true beauty in mind and body’s ability to clean up messes to bring order to the kitchen sink or the mountain of laundry that reaches the basement ceiling.

Or to match  thinking to heaven’s thought and shout not fair! to an obstacle levied that should not be.  And to have heaven relent.  It was what I had to learn from kindergarten on about my own ‘why’.

Even as I prepare for the unknown and maybe disappointment,  I cannot fall into the present with no thought.  I would have to discount my history which had me alive in worlds and places that have no names here on Earth.

Unless the mind is cutoff (oh yeah, remember the shamefully devastating  frontal lobotomy?)  with the  past having no memory, I am stupid to what my eyes see and not able to see how everything is connected.

A beloved says her grandfather god has his hand on her shoulder but she does not approach the  question as to why the cries of the families of the holocaust  were not heard as they were plunged into death clasping each other?  It takes mental effort to even form the questions to start the uncovering.

How does one ignore the consequences to actions of wars and words dripping death in their intent and still froth treacherous bubbles  of innocence?  A dismissal of ‘well, that’s life and bad things happen’ does not cut it anymore.  The width and depth of the abyss is too great for my humanity to leap.

Strangely, why when  conscience is finally deeply seated in the brain, why also is it so deeply connected to the heart of who we are? 

Yeah, well. . .AAhh  Mannnn.  And Amen.

artwork by Claudia Hallissey