143 SHEEP

  Nope, you guessed wrong. Not talking about the followers of the wannabe fascist ruler of America, a la Ron DeSantis. Those sheep are real sheep, 143 of them, who ran wildly, crazed by the imminent threat of serving as breakfast, lunch and supper for wolves.  Instead, in their undisciplined terror, they killed themselves, as they fell into a deep gully. So why mention this? After all, have we not all seen via the movies and TV how a herd of animals, crazed by a perception of threat, real or not, sparked by one of the herd, run themselves right into death anyway.

Why? Here is why. Because at times the most apt descriptive term for recent behavior by the human herd, the unthinking, undiscerning, desperate and crazed, knowing something is for sure wrong, and so they run. Into the flames rather than merely the flying embers. The danger level spikes, yet on they run. Straight into the hands of the 'enemy'. There is an old saying which explains this phenomenon. The sheep, running from being eaten by the wolf, run directly to the farmer - who then eats them anyway. Gulp! In more ways than one.

We are the sheep. We have been battered, beaten down by the past decades. Led by a buffoon, we lost our way, as people and as nation, been locked away, banned from movement, unable to be by our loved ones, run ragged by the everchanging rules and laws, threatened by the torrent of the gun crazed, truth denying herd, deserted by our supposed usually self - described leaders, and we are lost. Time and time again we run directly at an enemy equally as voracious as the original one and, well, we die anyway.

We retreat into childish behavior. We hope, as  misbehaving children do, that we will either go undiscovered or go scot-free from all consequence. We retreat to the mournful state of being echoing the words of an old Jill Sobule song, "Wish I had my mother to rock me to sleep." So do I. So do many of us, but alas, we must all grow up and face the nasty world on our own two legs.

Most of us are either numbed, deafened by the constant barrage of bad news, or are hyper aware, seeing threats where there are none, and unseeing of actual, very real, threats. We are those 143 sheep, unknowing, lacking thought, blindly following poorly chosen leaders into gullies of life which are draining us, depleting us, and the end, well, not good. Not at all.

 The question which arises is this: Can we, will we, rise to the call and save ourselves? Will we pay attention to the hearings of the Jan. 6 committee,  face the truth? Face the facts - there are traitors among us who have betrayed us, betrayed our nation, denied our history and true mantras. Will we face, as Liz Cheney stated, the "chilling" truths of that day and these times? Will we become far more aware of the corruption of our systems and institutions of government, the cynical defiant rulings of a minority of radically conservative GOP dominating state legislatures, passing laws infringing, violating, our personal liberties, our  bodies? Which increase the rising chances of being shot walking down the street, the growing lack of faith that we can actually avoid both the wolves  and the gullies. Are we totally lost?

I hope not. Even as we lose faith, as hope falters, that little bird, locked in Pandora's box, does hang in there. WE need to hang in there for ourselves. There are no gods on Olympus who will come arunnin', to pull us out of our own self- created muck and mire where we have buried our optimism, our can-do American trait, our positive attitudes. Lost in the sands of time, stomped upon by our misguided stampedes through life in our times. 

In short, we are broken. We have been broken by outside forces but equally as much by our own inner shortcomings. Yet there is hope. WE have faced hard times before in our history. We have come through, faced down, defeated those who wished otherwise, who worked so diligently to keep on breaking our bones. We cannot allow this to continue. Instead, take heart in the words of a famous American author, Ernest Hemingway, who wrote in A Farewell to Arms, this passage, these heartening words.

"The world breaks everyone and afterward many are strong at the broken places."

Lord knows we have many broken places. But we must remember that we can be strong at just those places. We have no other viable choice, must take it and run with it. Leave behind extremists on both sides of the spectrum. Leave behind those who espouse despair and violence. Leave aside those who aside would institutionalize hatred and bias ever more vehemently, a return to the not so good old days.

We must be stronger. WE MUST.