On the Rollercoaster

There are a lot of people claiming that 2016 is a terrible year.  I suppose I can get why they feel that way.  In some cases it had some pretty low moments.  Without doing too much research into the bleakness that is previous years, I wonder if it's roughly just another average year with ups and downs.  The thing is that 2016 probably means a lot of different things to different people.  For me it will always be a great year because my daughter came on the scene right near the beginning and she's pretty much set the tone for me ever since.  With that said, almost right after she was born I lost an old friend very suddenly.  I had no idea that the weird dichotomy of joy and sadness would pretty much be how I'd end up describing the year.

We may as well talk about the election.  I've kept my opinion offline because honestly the internet really doesn't need yet another extreme view, which only serves to further divide people.  That's the part that makes me sad.  I've never been a very political person to start with so maybe I've been blind to this kind of divisiveness in elections and politics in general.  Like some kind of idealistic fool, I always thought that the things that divided us were smaller than the things that brought us together.  And while I initially wasn't a fan of our current President, I eventually came to the conclusion that he was trying to do good, even if he wasn't always successful.  For the most part my life in the last eight years hasn't really changed all that much because of anything he or any other elected official was doing.  Apparently that can be seen as being wrapped up in my own little white blanket of privilege.  Because even though I've worked hard for what I have, there have always been advantages that I've taken for granted, blissfully unaware of many people out in my country who struggle every day in a system that seems to be actively working against them.  A lot of those people see the President as someone who doesn't represent or care about them.  And this is one of the many reasons why the election results came as such a shock to someone like me.

I live in a pretty liberal state and a very liberal city.  It's the kind of place where people are well off enough that they can be concerned about the name of the cow that supplied the steaks in the artisan butcher shop next to their favorite organic juice bar.  People tend to be socially conscious of the world and while I don't know if there is a lot of actual activism, there is at least perceived activism about issues.  Granted, like many Americans, we have a very short attention span and move on quickly to the next moral outrage or internet meme that is trending today.  So many of us gathered around our cable-free televisions to watch what was going to be an obvious victory for the seemingly obvious choice to run the country.  When it became obvious that things were going in a different direction I, like many others, were trying to figure out how it was possible?  How could this have blindsided me, when 24 hours before I would have been pretty confident that we'd have our first female President.  I hadn't taken into account the sheer amount of hatred for the Democratic candidate.  She was a politician and their very nature means they are going to do some shady things, but somehow she had managed to have normal people foaming at the mouth when they would even say her name.  There had always been a part of me that wanted to sit down with some of these people and get a real accounting of what it was they disliked about her.  By now, the term 'echo chamber' has been tossed around a lot and it makes sense.  We tend to surround ourselves with comfortable things and that includes information.  If someone or something challenges our ideas or beliefs, it's natural to shy away from that.  Toss is some good old fashion misinformation (or propaganda) and you've got millions of people who believe something that isn't always based on fact.  Or worse, based on a portion of fact, that has been isolated to prove their point.  Somewhere along the way we start to villainize people who disagree with us.  Social media was full of people who were saying not only did they disagree with the other side, but the other side was now bordering on evil, stupid, or brainwashed.  I found myself even falling into the trap of taking my disagreement on one thing and making it seem as though I was fundamentally opposed to these other people, who may as well been aliens because their beliefs were so different from mine.  I'm sure there are some truly awful people out there.  People who are excited to see hatred making a comeback.  Maybe it stems from fear or jealousy or ignorance.  Maybe it's simple greed.  I don't know at this point.  I would have thought in 2016 that pettiness and racism would be something we talk about as a thing of the past.  If not the past, then something that was getting better.  If anything, this year has made me wonder is the world really as good as I thought it was.  Then again, maybe that's what certain people want.  They want you to be afraid.  Afraid of the people around you that aren't on your side.  If you're not with us, then you're against us?  One has to ask, who benefits from us being afraid and hating those who are different from us?

As we close out this year, it feels like the nation is divided more than it's been in recent history.  Or maybe it just feels that way because I started paying attention.  There is a whole group of people in our country who have felt left behind.  I've been very fortunate to not know what that is like.  I don't know if those same people felt that the Republican candidate was the best candidate, but it was the one that they got.  The alternative being more of a government that wasn't listening to them.  In the end there was a massive shift from the status quo, which is how things tend to go after eight years with one party running the show.  People were bound to be upset either way, but now it seems to go beyond that where the winning side is taking victory laps and the losing side, still in disbelief, is doing anything it can to halt the inevitable reality that is coming in 2017.  It feels like a fight with a loved one.  Lots of things were said and done.  It seems like everyone now has this emotional bruise that's still tender.  I don't know how long it will last with people still holding their animosity towards each other.  Maybe like many things for our country, it too will pass.  At least right now it seems to be the capstone on a year that felt a bit bleak.

So as I think about this year, I have to remind myself that there has been some pretty great things as well.  The Cubs broke a 100+ year streak to finally win the World Series, giving the people of Chicago something to cheer about.  Our good friends had adorable babies, that will hopefully become friends with my daughter as they grow to be adorable together.  A private company, headed by the closest thing to Tony Stark, has successfully landed a rocket vertically, getting us one step closer to leaving Earth.  Doctors and scientists have created cybernetic implants that helped a man move his fingers for the first time.  Stem cells have been injected into stroke patients allowing them to walk again.  Someone with a lot of time on their hands discovered a new prime number, although I don't know how that helps us, but it's more to prove that we can keep finding new things, even when we think we've seen it all.  By the way, they've confirmed (again) that there is a ninth planet in our solar system.  I remember growing up with Planet X as a possibility so it's good to know that we've got people staring out into the cosmos and seeing things that have been hiding from us for longer than we know.  And finally, we got a new Star Wars movie.  Being the same age as Star Wars, I will always be thankful that I get to go back to that galaxy far, far away and see if the good guys and overcome impossible odds to save the day.  Maybe with the perspective of time, we'll all look back at 2016 as just another strange year in a long weird journey.  I'm excited to see what happens in 2017.

On Fatherhood

As with many things in life, it's hard to know how it's really going to be until you experience it.  No matter how much preparation you think you have, when the actual time comes, you are just along for the ride and hope that you don't mess up too bad.  People would say how you don't know how you'll be able to love someone as much as you do your children.  You think, I've experienced love before, this must just be more of it.  It's amazing how much of an understatement that really becomes once you look into the eyes of your child.  For a father it's a little different because it takes a few months of looking into their eyes before they start to show signs of recognition and understanding that you as an entity are going to keep showing up.  Also after a few months they transform so much and into the start of a person.  Plus it doesn't hurt that my daughter thinks I'm the most hilarious shaved ape out there.

The part that they don't really talk to you about is the sheer terror that's constantly in the background.  It's a bit like that low level hum you hear when near power lines.  Even when things are going well and you've had a good dad moment, I feel it in the back of my mind.  If you read the news for even a minute, you get the impression that the survival rate of the average person is pretty bleak.  If you are lucky enough to avoid some random tragedy or bout of senseless violence, then there is a whole host of parasites, viruses, and cancers that are willing to eat you from the inside.  Then again it seems like the whole point of the news is to keep you paying attention to the news for just a little longer.  Is the world really such a terrible place?  Is life really that hard?  I know that for some people it's harder and shorter than it should be, but we've been blessed with a fairly safe and happy environment.  Still, I look at her and don't like thinking about there being a moment when she figures out that the world isn't as magical as I've made it out to be.  Sometimes I wish I could just take her out of this reality and off into cartoon land.  The logical part of me knows that this isn't fair to her as a person, but I don't know how to handle when they find out that the world as a whole doesn't really care about them in the way that their people care about them as an individual.  I wonder about what lies I'll have to tell to keep her safe a little longer.

I've found myself looking at everyone very differently.  Seeing my daughter experiencing the world for the first time, I wonder how any person becomes what they are today.  Even the asshole who cut me off this morning was once a child.  Once, a long time ago, they had a world of potential, where they could dream of doing or being anything.  They still may be on that journey, but that route went directly in front of MY journey.  Granted it doesn't always change the way I interact with people because I'm still me.  There are moments where I can't help but wonder how someone's life brought them from being a wide-eyed child to a cynic.  I suppose one could ask the same of me and I had a pretty good childhood.  I look differently at various forms of entertainment too.  Movies and television where characters are killed or hurt make me wonder what would it be like to be their parents.  I still enjoy the things I always have, it's just now there is an added bit of empathy that intrudes in on everything.

I worry about what she's going to be like when she's old enough to realize I'm not the funniest person on the planet.  There will come a time when she doesn't want to hang out with me, which only makes me want to spend that much more time with her now.  I want her to be smart and clever and funny and able to exist in the world without me because if everything goes according to plan that's how it's going to be.  I worry about being around for as much of her life as possible.  I worry that all those stupid cheeseburgers have quietly stolen years from me.  I worry that one day I'll be driving and look right when I should have looked left and have my story with her end.  I worry about her life and all the things that could happen and won't even say them here, in some superstitious belief that I don't want to give them power, in the event that there is some malevolent entity controlling our reality that would find humor in taking my daughter from me.  I worry about how she's going to handle love.  I wonder if she'll find a partner in life like I did.  I hope it doesn't take her as long to get there as it did me, even if it was worth the wait.  I worry that I may never get to see her own children, if she decides to have them.  Basically I worry about everything.

Even with all that being said, I've been rewarded with this tiny happy, crazy, curious person in progress that looks to me like I'm the expert on life.  It would be silly to say I hope I don't screw up because it seems impossible to not make mistakes along the way.  I just hope that she's able to forgive me for not having all the answers.

On Building Tomorrow

Are we the sum of our past?  Is it possible that our personality is just a collection of events that have slowly shaped us into the person we are right now?  Like water tumbling over rocks, it slowly changes the shape of things.  What happens though if you can't remember the things that built you into you?  If I can't remember all the little things that turned me into the person I am now, do I really know who I am?  Maybe the things I do or think are more influenced by the unremembered past than my current perception of the world around me.

I suppose one could argue that aren't defined by our past, but rather by our actions.  That's all well and good, except that we hold to the past for so many things.  Your ability to purchase things is dictated by your credit history.  The jobs you're able to qualify for are determined by the jobs you've already done.  Or at least claimed to have done on your resume.  Criminals are branded by the crimes of their past, even if they will never do anything like that again.  We are haunted by our past.  Even if you can't or won't remember the past, it's likely that someone will remember it for you.  Now with more and more of our private lives living on the internet, it's likely that our pasts will outlive us.  Facebook potentially has the ability to track an entire lifetime.  Granted they are doing it to make sure they know exactly how to market to you, but it's possible that one day someone will go back and study a Facebook-like timeline to try and better understand the life and times of someone who has yet to be famous.

There is a part of me that wishes I had the ability to travel back into my own memories.  What would I see if I could go back to my grandmother's farm in Wisconsin circa 1985?  How did that last conversation with a childhood friend really go before they left your life forever?  I'm not looking to change things.  What's done is done.  Still it would be interesting to be able to revisit the moments in your past that your memory can't quite grasp onto.  What did my grandfather's voice really sound like?  What did the living room look like for my baby brother's first Christmas?  Would seeing and hearing these memories change who I am now?  Would they simply reinforce the beliefs I already hold onto?

We all carry around little time preservers in our pockets.  They capture where we were, what we were doing, who we were with, what we ate (and how great it looked), and creates a sense of holding onto that moment in time.  I don't know about you, but it's gotten to the point now where you don't take just one picture.  You snap a dozen shots to find that one good one.  That's the one that makes it.  That's the one you share and the one you'll ultimately look back on and use as your memory anchor.  My daughter doesn't know how to sit still, so for every picture I show to the world, there are many that are thrown aside and lost forever.  Most of those pictures are of a blurry little baby with her eyes half closed, but still they are part of the moment I'm trying to save.  Never mind the fact that the times I have pictures of something are when I had the foresight to pull out my phone to take a picture.  There are times when I just want to experience the moment without trying to save it.  In the moment I appreciate it more by just living rather than recording.  It doesn't take long after though that I wonder if I'll remember it later.  Is it just another moment that will fade into the background?

Maybe the past is just a sort of guide to our future.  It helped us get here and generally points us in a direction.  All of our history only serves to take us to the next place.  It does make me wonder though how today will influence tomorrow.

On the Island

The world is full of great things.  Full of terrible things.  Mostly it seems to be full of things I know nothing about.  I like a lot of different things: movies, television, comics, art, books, trees, toys, video games, the outside in general, travel, music, good beer, somewhat good beer, and of course delicious food.  It would seem like I'm fairly diverse in the things I like, but it's becoming increasingly apparent that for every interest I have there are glaring blind spots.  Someone will tell me about a television show or album that they enjoy and I wonder how is it that something like that has escaped me?  Maybe it's become easier and easier in today's world to customize our lives to the things we like.  You go to a webpage and tell it your interests and it will start building you a feed of information.  The better ones will help you discover new things, but most of them really just let you reinforce the wall of our own tastes.

I'm not saying it's bad to like what you like.  It's more that it feels a bit overwhelming when there is so much content out there.  How is one expected to keep up?  Maybe we're not supposed to.  Maybe it's alright to miss out on that one thing that you'd probably love, but just don't have space for in your life.  How do you know when that's OK though?  How do you know if you're spending too much of your time on the old standby when there are so many other options out there?

Like music?  You could listen to new music every day for a year and not hear the same song repeated, if you didn't feel that compulsion to re-listen to old favorites.  Hey I like Zeppelin as much as the next person, but seriously it's been forty year.  Maybe it's OK to see how music has grown and changed since then.  You never know, you may find something you like that was made after 1973.  It's got me wondering how it happens.  At one point the world was full of new and wonderful things.  Everything felt fresh and exciting.  Then we find something we like and say to ourselves "This is it.  My search is over."  This also leads to that feeling that certain things are now sacred and anyone or anything that attempts to build upon that is seen as an affront to the original.  The problem with this is that most of the world is a remix.  Everything is an iteration and for the generation that creates it, it feels like the source.  My daughter is going to grow up in a world where Ninja Turtles and Transformers are these loud, garish, obnoxious movies of explosions and silliness, whereas I grew up with them being something completely different, while still being fairly annoying to my parents.  It took me awhile, but I've gotten to a point where it's OK for the next generation to have their versions of stuff.  It doesn't take away from my version.  The remakes are made for me.  They don't care about me or my old ass opinion, even though the property was originated when I was their target audience.

The whole thing has me wondering about the things I like.  Do I like them because they are still interesting to me?  Or do I like them because for as long as I can remember I have liked them?  It's OK to ask yourself why you're interesting in something.  It could be the previous version of yourself found it compelling, but the current version of you doesn't get the same thrill as you used to.  For me it's caused me to reconsider how I spend my time because it's becoming increasingly valuable to me.  Sometimes that means picking up something I put down years ago and seeing it with different eyes.  Sometimes that means putting something on a shelf because it doesn't provide the same value it had in the past.  Maybe by doing that I'll be able to open myself up to being able to see the new things out there that could blow my mind and make me ask myself how I've lived this long without knowing about them.

On Lost & Not Found

I remember when I was very little, a friend had given me a Snake-Eyes GI Joe figure.  He was my favorite character and I was very excited to have one of my own.  That night I was taking a bath and playing with my new guy when my mom came in and said that another friend of mine, we'll call him "Tom", was outside and wanted to know if he could borrow a toy to play with.  I wasn't super close with Tom and he tended to move a lot so it was hard to say when I'd see him again.  So I decided to let him borrow one of my other figures.  A few minutes later my mom came back and said that Tom had asked specifically for Snake-Eyes.  To this day I wish I could go back and tell the younger version of me that he shouldn't loan out his favorite toy, but that's not how it works.  So being a young idiot, I gave my favorite toy to my mom to give to Tom to borrow.  That was the last time I ever saw that toy.  The next time I saw Tom I asked where my Snake-Eyes was and he said he lost it, which I knew was a lie, but I didn't really have a whole lot of power to do anything about it.  It's been thirty years and it still haunts me a little bit (obviously).  Now I know that in the grand scheme of my life that little action figure wasn't a big deal.  To my childhood self though it was a hard lesson in trust and loss of that trust.  It changed the way I looked at Tom too because now I realized that he wouldn't hesitate to take away something valuable to me.

Being a little kid you lose things all the time.  Most of the time it was my own fault for putting something down and forgetting where it was.  Sometimes I imagine all the toys and knickknacks that must be scattered around my dad's property.  Of course there is the possibility that they've simply blinked out of existence or have been consumed by the world somehow.  Maybe in a thousand years someone will dig up all those lost things and start to piece together a story about my life based on the things I had when I was young.

We all lose things.  If you think about it, most people have probably lost more things than they currently have.  It's a strange thing though to have something simply vanish from your world without a trace.  I've joked before that I wish I could have Google Life.  I could call out and say "Google where is that necklace we've been looking for?" and Google would respond with "It's behind the refrigerator.  It has been there for 2.3 weeks".  It seems like there should only be a finite number of places something should logically be, but as we all know when we do manage to recover lost things, that they tend to be in what seems like random locations.  Finding the television remote in the pantry with the plates.  That black shirt you like in a completely different closet.  A pair of glasses in the trunk of your car.  It makes one wonder what was going on at the precise moment when an object became lost to us.

Strangely enough though I find myself being a fairly good finder of things.  This is especially true around the house when asked if we have something, usually a tool of some kind, and my weird little mind suddenly recalls the possibility of a square bit for a drill sitting on a shelf in the shed.  Sure enough it's there.  The how and why my brain can sporadically remember the location of random items has never been quite clear.  It's almost as though some part of my mind saw the item and thought that it was important enough to note for later.  Meanwhile the thing I know we have, but isn't in the location where it should be, draws a complete blank.  That's kind of the blessing and curse of living with someone though.  You have a second person that may be able to find something you've misplaced.  On the flip side though you can never be sure if that other person isn't the cause of something going missing in the first place.  There is always that shadow of doubt.  Did you really lose your favorite t-shirt or was lost on purpose when you weren't looking?

Crossed Wires

On Batman

Another one of those times when I'm thinking way too much about something totally trivial.  Maybe it's good to let my mind wander on silly things for a minute.

Batman is seventy five years old.  That means most living Americans have spent their whole lives with him as a character.  After all that time, he is still insanely popular, even though he's becoming more and more antiquated as a character.  Everyone knows the story about how his parents were murdered and from that day forward he vowed to fight against crime.  Depending on the story, his parents' murderer may or may not be found, leaving even the greatest detective a mystery that cannot be solved.  I actually kind of prefer the time when it's not part of some greater conspiracy and is instead a random act of senseless violence that shook the city to its core.  The murderer was some sad, desperate person who resorted to murder more out of fear than anything else.  Then they were gone into the night, not realizing the thing they unleashed.

Gotham is supposed to be a stand in for the city of New York, although it's apparently a darker version of it, whereas Metropolis is the shining beacon of hope that shows what the world could be.  Never mind that they have Superman, who can solve most problems before they become problems.  The basic idea about Gotham is that the city has become so corrupt that its rotten to the core.  Every story talks about how organized crime really runs things and the police are all on the take.  If it's really a stand in for New York, that's basically saying that in a city of eight million people there are only two kinds of people; criminals and victims.  Somehow criminals have taken over ever facet of the city and anyone who opposes them is corrupted or destroyed.  Even before Batman arrives there is really only one police officer who is willing to stand up to the corruption and do the right thing.  So in what would likely be the biggest police force in America, out of over thirty thousand police officers, there is only one guy attempting to stem the tide of evil?

So Bruce Wayne dedicates his life to becoming the perfect instrument to fight against crime.  He does this by traveling the world and learning to become a ninja, because that's the most reasonable way to counter corruption in your home.  After a decade away, learning untold secrets that will help him on his crusade against injustice, he comes back to Gotham and teams up with his butler to start his one-man attack against the concept of crime.  Using the icon of something that scared him as a child, he dresses up as a bat and calls himself Batman, which may be a little on the nose if you think about it.

His real power comes from his willingness to do whatever it takes to fight against crime, except for using a gun or committing murder himself.  I get that if your parents were murdered by a gun, then you'll probably have an aversion to them, however, throwing razorbladed metal bats at people's faces, using explosives, and breaking bones with your bare hands probably isn't much better than shooting a small piece of metal at high velocity into someone in order to stop them.  Regardless of his method of choice, he's still one man fighting a fight, he knows he'll never win.  The stories keep making sure to point out that Bruce Wayne is a billionaire and uses his vast fortune to supplement his war on crime.  It seems like a drastic misuse of resources to have an armored car outfitted to look like a bat, a super computer that only he gets to use, and various pieces of tech that are necessary as the story requires.  He has the money and influence of Elon Musk and uses that to put on a cape, drop down into alleyways and punch out bad guys.  That's his war on crime.  It's like fighting cancer with aspirin.  Bruce Wayne could probably do more good with his money as a humanitarian than as a crime fighter.  At the very least he could use the money to make organized crime irrelevant by buying them out or creating opportunities for people that would mean crime would seem like the more risky option than the legitimate one.

Most of the time Batman is defined by his villains.  He lives in a city that has been driven so insane that it creates literal monsters.  It could be that his very existence helped create them.  It's almost as though he showed Gotham that it's OK to dress up like a lunatic and do whatever you wanted.  If you don't want to be just another widget in the system of criminals and victims then dust off that purple suit and name yourself after a playing card.  At least that way you'll stand out from the crowd.  Those crazies aren't even the real threat, they're just the most colorful.  The Joker is going to release a hot air balloon of poisonous gas on the city and only Batman can stop him?  What about the Gotham police force, the National Guard, the FBI, or the NSA?  That would be an act of terrorism and they're able to stop a lot of those plots long before they start filling up the balloon.  Try checking the abandoned fairgrounds on the edge of town.  That would leave Batman the ability to fight actual corruption.

I get that he's a fictional comic book character.  After seventy five years though, you'd think there would be a way to make him relevant to today's world, instead of constantly rehashing the same story over and over again.  What would someone with his willpower and resources really be able to do if he stopped and rethought his strategy on fighting crime.  That's probably where most people get lost and realize that it's a lot more complicated of an issue.  There isn't some evil Court of Owls that secretly controls the whole city.  Instead it's just people doing whatever they think they can get away with.  Since that would require a lot more nuance, we go back to the well of having a man dressed as a bat showing how bad ass he is by breaking the face of that would-be rapist.

On Object Permanence

Throughout most of my life the decisions I've made have been fairly reversible.  That's not to say that they weren't big or even life-altering decisions, but the vast majority of them have been decisions I could ultimately change my mind about later.  Sure it could cost me a large some of money or time or even a bit of humiliation.  There could be a cost and if I wanted to pay it, then I could potentially undo what I just did.  Part of this has been because my decisions have only had an effect on just my own life.  If I wanted to move from Colorado to Arizona or from Arizona back to Colorado with only a couple of weeks lead time, then it wasn't really a problem for anyone except me.

Some could argue that there is a sense of freedom to being able to pick up and go at a moment's notice.  The whole world has opportunities just around the next corner, it's just up to you to go off and find them.  While I was young that was both amazing and terrible.  It was great being able to throw everything I owned into a truck, toss the stuff that didn't, and then drive off into the sunset and onto the next adventure.  If I thought about it too much, I'd start to realize that my life was so temporary that I could leave it behind with very little notice.  It felt like I was always just getting started.  The real problem was always my inability to see what I was leaving because I was so focused on where I was going, with hopes that just over the next hill would be the thing I thought I was looking for.  Every place I left, I left people and a life, even if that life wasn't exactly what I thought I wanted.  I think it was easier to leave because I knew that if things didn't work out, then I could easily return.

It's only been very recently in my life that my decisions have started becoming more permanent.  It's not always easy for me to recognize that because my old mindset creeps back in and I think the person I'm being introduced to is just another face in the crowd.  Nope, that's a future family member.  The house I'm moving into isn't just some random apartment that I'll ditch in a year or so when the lease is up.  Even my career is changing.  It used to be a string of unrelated jobs, where as long as it paid well and they didn't treat me like garbage, then I'd stick around for a year or so.  It's been difficult for me at times because living a momentary life meant that while you wouldn't have to deal with anything terrible for too long, it also meant that I wouldn't really feel attached to anything in a meaningful way.  It's only after I had left something/someone behind that I'd realize how good it was for me.

I'm about to have what could be considered the most permanent life event.  I woke up one day and realized that when my child is born, I'll forever be her father.  No matter what else happens in my life, that will always be true.  My life and the choices in it will stop being so fleeting and start becoming more permanent aspects of my world.  It's almost as though all those one-off decisions and events have been leading to this.  The one that matters most.  It's a little intimidating to think about.  It's something I've wanted for a long time, but it's always been an abstract.  Very soon it will be a reality and it makes me want to be better than I currently am.  

On How It Could Be

There are many times in my life when I wonder how things could be.  Maybe not so much a perfect world, but maybe a slightly better one.  I don't know if we could ever achieve perfection.  It's something of a fool's errand to think you could reach it.  It shouldn't stop us from trying though.  Plus I don't know how we would react if we found ourselves in a perfect world.  No, I sometimes think about what would it be like if things were just a little bit different.  Sometimes it's seemingly small changes that could have a huge impact.  Like what if our internet was cheaper and faster?  What if it was free?  I try to imagine what life could be like if everyone across the country was connected by incredibly fast connections to each other.  Could we create true virtual experience that brought us together, even though we're miles apart?  I know that technology isn't always the answer to bringing people together.  When used right though, it can bridge some of those gaps.

What could the world be like if our teachers were some of the best paid, best educated, most respected people in our society?  I have nothing against athletes, movie stars, or pop singers.  I enjoy a lot of what they do.  Honestly though aren't they a bit like junk food?  Watching someone excel at sports is a great experience.  It probably encourages young people to see what they can accomplish with their own bodies either alone or within a team.  That part is great and should be applauded.  To an outside observer it must seem strange that we give the most money to someone who can put a ball through a net better than anyone else.  When you go home after seeing that you're life isn't changed all that much.  Sure it may have been exciting in the moment, but that wasn't your moment.  That was someone else's fabricated moment.  With movies and music there can be a story being told.  Someone can transport you to an imaginary place and time.  They can make you think about things in a different way.  Even with that we're essentially saying that the guy who grew out a beard and pretended to be a fur trapper this year is one of the most important people, at least from a financial perspective.  Meanwhile the person who gets up early every day so they can sit with a student to help them learn the fundamentals of life makes enough money to live, but still has to worry about money when it comes summer time.  Imagine if the salary of the athlete and the teacher were reversed?

I wonder what it could be like if our political system were just a little bit better.  If you felt like the people elected to represent you were not only someone you could trust, but someone you respected.  And not because you paid them or promised them a favor in return, but because as your representative they wanted not just the best for you, but for all of us.  I'm not a politician and I know that the world is complicated.  It's just a little sad to me that in order to get anywhere in the professional world of politics you have to be something of a shark already.  Or at least keep yourself surrounded by sharks for protection.  How can you hope to accomplish anything if you're spending so much of your time trying to not get eaten by the system?  I try to imagine a world where you know in your heart that the government is an institute for good and that they are working hard at making the world better for everyone.

It's mostly a dream.  It's not much different than fantasizing about what you'd do if you won the lottery.  It seems like the trick is to accept that the world may not be anywhere close to perfect, but it has the potential to be better.  And if that's not always possible, we always have the choice to be a little bit better ourselves.  Maybe that's enough.