So what brought that on yesterday? Why did I feel the need to publicly affirm I've got it pretty damned good, when normally such a statement goes without saying?
It's because the law of gravity has been repealed. ("There is no gravity: the Earth just sucks.")
No joke, it seems like the world is teetering on a precipice of late, and my personal world, well nowhere near as dramatic, has reflected some of the zeitgeist.
Larger world first. It's wobbly. Greece is fixing to abandon the Eurozone; the fact it never should have been admitted in the first place has finally dawned on the movers and shakers. The markets continue to be held aloft on who knows what, but most people look at the stock market nowadays and snicker. (The Dow's new motto: "Delusional since 2008!") Everywhere I look I see jobs disappearing, wages being cut, pensions being slashed, and the government -- which used to at least pretend to be on our side, once -- is firmly in the pockets of Big Business and says as much in every press release. What's more. they've cunningly cultivated a widespread anti-union sentiment, such that an increasing number of Canadians are actually cheering the race to the bottom. Surely they'll change their tune when it's their wages. What's frustrating is that the Canada I grew up in had an intrinsic understanding that, to quote Marcus Aurelius, 'what benefits the hive benefits the bee'. But lately it's been 'SCREW YOU, I'VE GOT MINE'. And this is considered healthy.
Besides unions, our federal government has essentially declared war on science and the environment. Their every action betrays a wilful ignorance of reality...and that, more than anything else, is depressing.
Quebec gets it. The rest of Canada thinks the ongoing protests in Montreal are about a tuition hike. They are, in the sense that the First World War was about Gavrilo Princip. The reason the modest tuition hike is causing so much consternation is simple: Quebeckers are being asked to pay more for an education that increasingly means less and less, in a corrupt environment where dreams go to die. If the rest of the country was imbued with even the slightest Gallic sense of outrage, we'd all be protesting too.
It wasn't that long ago that a university degree meant, at the very least, a good shot at stable, long-term employment that paid a living wage. Today a B.A. is a glorified high school diploma and even a Ph.D. could leave you with more debt than prospects to pay it off.
Remember those halcyon days when one breadwinner could buy a home, furnish it, and raise a family in it? Now, granted, we forget how many luxuries we deem necessities nowadays, but the point remains: in many Canadian cities a home is out of reach for anyone not making six figures. And even then, you won't actually own your home for decades. Not pretty, and likely to get worse.
Personally...
Starting with Eva's dad and his cancer. See, here's the thing. I wrote a Breadbin entry a couple of weeks ago that barely scratched the surface. No disrespect meant to my father or stepfather: I wish I had gotten to know John Hopf better than I have since I married his daughter. I respect and admire him tremendously and more than anything, I wish I could tell him so in person. Day to day life seems like such a flimsy excuse when shoved up cheek by jowl with mortality. So I have to work. Yeah. I bet he wishes he could.
That friend I dumped? Is going to stay dumped, and that's still bumming me out. I had hoped she would see reason. I should have known better.
Add in the stress and strife of workaday life that we all deal with and things just seem a tad desolate of late. I've been averaging about five hours of sleep a night, which is nowhere near enough, but short of displacing the contents of our chest freezer -- which I'm pretty sure would land me in trouble -- I don't know how to increase that number. Ah, well, this too shall pass. I need to remind myself of my last post and expand on it in my mind. Above all, I must think positively. Instead of saying "I won't succeed", I'll say 'I WILL fail!"
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