Concerns

There’s a lot to be concerned about these days. Take your pick: covid, war, food shortages, fuel prices, inflation in general -the list could go on and on.

While those are all real things to be concerned about, they aren’t my biggest worry. There are things I can do to mitigate the worse effects of most of those things. Some things are tougher than others. The big one for me is not being in an active war zone. 

My main concern is not the problems we face but how society in general is facing them. You might have noticed that a lot of people are acting crazy. Stress is taking its toll. People are snapping. Things that would have been ignored in the past now become the final straw for somebody. Next thing you know someone is shooting up a kid’s birthday party. 

Covid isolation may be a factor. Social bonds are not as strong. Frankly, a lot of us have forgotten how to deal with flesh and blood people. 

To make matters worse there are leaders setting one group against another for their personal gain. Politicians are pitting the little people against each other instead of doing their jobs. I know I have more in common with recent immigrants who have a different religion, skin color, and language than I do with the billionaires who run the country. It’s been my experience that when in a jam that guy who doesn’t look like me will help me out long before our so called leaders will. 

There are some hopeful signs. Some people are forming communities and working together during these troubling times. I also know people who are diagnosed as mentally ill actually pulling it together to deal with problems. During WWII the British worried that mentally ill people would get much worse and that there would be a lot more of them. Maybe it was their “we are all in this together attitude” but those people who they thought would be much worse actually pitched in and did their bit for the war effort. 

So anyway, we are all in this together. Let’s act that way.

-Sixbears