SOMETIMES YOU JUST GOTTA'

  You just gotta' stop and breathe the air, polluted or not. Ya' gotta' take a breath, a step forward and stop and reassess. Take a look around and wonder and rate the values in your life. The true valuation of your life. Time to stop, get off the mad merry-go-round. 

Another year has gone by and at times it feels as if we never moved forward from last year. Ukraine War - check. Trump and his treasonous insanity - check. Melania and her idiocy - check. GOP and Democrats wrangling each other - check. Economy evaluated with dire predictions - check. Ever more catastrophic predictions re climate change and the continued viability of the world - check. So tell me, exactly what have we accomplished in a year and what are we planning for the coming year? Another same old, same old? Cannot be. Must not be. Yet ...

I took my own advice and took a breather, called a small halt from the chaos, trying to put it into some kind of sane reassuring evaluation. A hope to take account of blessings, of the positive, over the ever present demoralizing facts of our modern day lives. Try it. You might like its results.

Most of us have shared family and friends moments over the past year. We have lost some to age, illness, accidents, but we have also shared in moments of joy. A wedding. Abar mitzvah. A confirmation. A simple habit of a grandchild calling you often. A joy our memory has etched with sadness at the loss of those within that memory. The birth of a new generation with the ever present hope that they indeed will change the world. And a new man in my life - not yet two feet, single digit weight, and the conqueror of my entire being. There is good in life as there are, remain, good people among us, even strangers who will do a small, unexpected kindness lighting up a dreary day.

Take a look around. At times I bet your family disputes, trivial or not, depress you. Why can they not be settled? Now take a look around at that same family and appreciate what one has. I am ever so grateful for my kids and their kids. They have grown up, are still growing, maturing, into caring adults, thoughtful children who ask the right questions, who actually think, who deal out spontaneous reassurances and gestures of love. They even surprise us at times by the depth of their deeds and words. Value the good, the real, the hopeful and positive over the woulda', coulda', shoulda'. You will be better for it.

Into the macro word we move. How does one take any positive out of the mess we have? Simply look a tad deeper, past the extremists, the antisemites, the haters, the bigots, the damned greedy politicians who have sold their souls in lousy bargains with the devil and have become his minions. Lok past and find areas of hope and truth.

Yes, they are acidic, destroyers, but look- they are beginning to pour out their acid on each other, or as one person put it, behaving like "trailer park hoodrats", snapping, biting, scratching each other for the few crumbs that remain. People like this always end up turning on each other. To wit: the ranks of the Nazis in Germany who turned on each other, became their own private enemies. The Communists of the USSR, the Putin regime, China, as they turn on each other, hounding the weaker of them, and one day, hopefully soon, there will be redress for all of us. They will crumble under the massive weight of their misspent days.

President Zelensky, a short, tubby man, unprepossessing at first glance, ironically, a Jew saving Ukraine, inspiring its brave people, a country where hundreds of thousands of Jews were killed through pogroms over the centuries and cooperation with the Nazi "bullet Holocaust' and deportation to extermination. A people who now respond to his optimism, his hope to attain a meaningful victory over aggression, insisting that

"Even if there is no electricity, the light of our faith in ourselves will not be put out."

Yes, somehow, often late, after much agony and chaos, good does overcome evil. It is the story of man's history on this planet. We hope we can change its current self-destructive path. If not us, then the people of forthcoming generations, whatever Gen-name we assign them.

Sometimes you simply gotta' have faith, In the power of man to reform. In the love of freedom. In the progress that has been made since we first walked upon this planet. At the innate goodness to be found within people. With faith in our deity, whatever name we assign to it.

We will not let the light go out.