Dispatch from Dogpatch #21 28 July 2015

Where Have All the Flowers Gone?

I suppose it is time for a little generational examination.  I hear all the time from people about the sad state of affairs of our nation.  I hear the rattle of taking our country back and restoring the Constitution.  (On the matter of the Constitution, wasn’t Civics the most dreaded and boring class in high school?  Now, everybody is a Constitutional scholar.). God has been removed from our schools!  (I didn’t know we had that kind of power, and if we did we wouldn’t need God anyway).  Kids have no respect for anything...all they do is take, take, take.  Drugs are everywhere (yep, don’t forget to include alcohol)!  Jeez, I sound just like my parents! This list can go on, but any reasonable person would know there is plenty more wrong, right?

Well, the first thing we need to do is to find somebody to blame….Obama, maybe?  Fair enough, he has been blamed for pretty much everything from the Iraq war to deflating the footballs during the Superbowl; except Benghazi, that one is Hilary’s.

Now, according to our generation, we are the bomb!  We were raised right, got beat for bad behavior, went to church, had jobs in high school, were taught by teachers who would jerk a knot in you, studied hard, went to war...and then them damned hippies showed up and crapped on everything. We started wearing grubby clothes, letting our hair grow, driving VW buses, Cheech and Chong, everybody played a guitar, Peter, Paul and Mary, Bob Dylan, Rare Earth, Frank Zappa (a personal favorite), BTO...and then that damned pot showed up and we rolled one up took a toke, a long toke and didn’t give a damn about anything...except, SEX, DRUGS, and ROCK ‘N ROLL!  Peace and Love, Woodstock, Janis, Jimi, Jim Morrison, Steppenwolf, Fillmore East and West, Haight Ashbury, and them damned hippies. We had it figured...we were not going to live like our parents and the “establishment”.  We had better ideas or rather a grand overdose of naivete.

Now, I could speak to my parents generation, but no, I will not.  I just know that my children thought I was lame and retarded just like I did my parents.  The older I got, the smarter my parents turned out to be.

Corporations beat us to that better idea.  As we were burying our buddies from Vietnam, finishing school, marrying and turning into our parents (God forbid), we forgot our idealism.  We had been swept up in capitalism.  It all happened with the credit card (part of my conspiracy theory).  We returned, docilely, to the order of things, instead of creating the order.  Instead of idealism and spiritual living, it turned into money and stuff.  I am guilty of it and sad about it.  It wasn’t the outcome I had hoped for.  Actually, I can’t even remember what the outcome was suppose to be.  I got into debt so fast and worried about how I was to pay for everything, the best I could do was watch Monday Night RAW and hope Hulk Hogan would remain champion.

I did my best to keep pace.  Danced as fast as I could, and pretty much made a mess of things.  Now as the arc of my life bends toward the sunset, so much becomes clearer.  Wisdom is accumulated through experience and trial.  It is not something we buy.  It comes to us quietly, like a cat that crawls up on your lap and purrs.  We know when it is right.  We know what is right.  Yet, we had to learn it ourselves.

Actually, I don’t think there is that much wrong in the world that we cannot fix.

I’m not going to list it all, but suffice it to say, we can find the solutions ourselves.  

We start with the idea we can overcome all these problems, if we just get rid of the “stupid”.  What an unpleasant word.  Now if I start attaching names to the “stupid”, I will lose readers.  Define your own “stupid”. What I want is to expand the readership and allow clear thinking to emerge.  That’s your job.  I work on mine everyday.

I’m covered up in grandchildren now.  I see their innocence and listen to their pure, clean thoughts.  I couldn’t enjoy that as much as a parent...too much going on.  I hope I have some time to get things right with them before they are attacked and swallowed up in the dualism and capitalism we faced.  So few of our generation were able to escape those isms.  

It is easy to be negative and dark.  What is needed is light and the positive word.  I don’t want to be old and a curmudgeon (some would say I am late to both).  That’s okay, too, it give me something to work toward.

Namaste!