Return To Sender

I haven’t published anything on my site for some time and actually thought I was finished with it. I have been writing a lot but not publishing. It just seemed everything I wrote was so negative and jaded that I didn’t want to put it out there. We are surrounded with the negativity of COVID19, the madness of Trump and the continual move by the current alt-right governments popping up everywhere I really didn’t want to contribute to any more negativity. However my writing does give me a way to keep that negativity from festering in myself. I am my own sounding board and my own emotional drainage spot. So I write.

In my own province we have a government that is closer to fascism than democracy. I can’t help but feel like that we are now in the twilight of democracy. A democracy so many gave their lives for seventy-five years ago. Ironically, in todays world, we send a younger generation to foreign lands to fight for a concept they no longer really understand. I see nothing but negative social media posts over the hypocrisy of our own political leaders for those very acts. I can’t help but speak out so I am back. I can’t, in good conscience, tell others they need to speak out while silencing myself. I cannot join the ranks of the complacent because that is what is killing our system.

Most recently I came across this picture of myself. That was a time when I could climb trees and leave my crutches on the ground. This was by Pigeon Lake and I loved being up in a tree cut off from the gravity of the ground while just gazing with a blank mind at the never ending sky above me. I was an outspoken activist with a busy career. I was going to change the world. After all the Vietnam War had recently abated and we had all of this change ahead of us to overcome the privilege of those who pulled the strings at that time. And while I was looking at this picture one of my favourite songs popped into my head but I saw it in a completely different light.

I close my eyes, only for a moment, and the moment’s gone
All my dreams pass before my eyes, a curiosity
Dust in the wind
All they are is dust in the wind

While that tune floated around my head I was pulled into the thought of Kamala Harris being named Joe Biden’s running mate in the upcoming American Presidential election. The news and all of the political pundits were heralding this as the passing of the torch to the new generation. That’s when it dawned on me, I’ve been working my ass off on social media trying to do some bridge building with “that new generation” by focusing on 30 year olds, Kamal Harris is 55 years old. The generation I have been trying to reach out to is almost 30 years younger. The ones I have been reaching out to are more like that guy in the tree, they want to change the world they know at 30 but, generationally thinking, we may have a good knowledge base at 30 but the “wisdom” required to make that knowledge effective is much more apparent in a 55 year old. It took me hitting fifty to really understand that. I had the knowledge, I just didn’t have an organized tool box.

Same old song, just a drop of water in an endless sea
All we do crumbles to the ground though we refuse to see
Dust in the wind
All we are is dust in the wind
Oh, ho, ho

So I am back and I will be speaking up. The majority of my generation (the baby-boomers) have become fixed in their believes. They are still voting like it’s the 70’s, that the Lougheed Conservatives are still building the wealth of Alberta (Kenney and his UCP gang are a long shot from what Lougheed began) and still hold a grudge over a decision of Pierre Elliot Trudeau from fifty years ago (National Energy Plan). It’s over, let’s move on and keep would be fascists out of our political halls of power. Let’s not let a grudge that should have been buried two generations ago let ourselves fall into demagoguery. That is what is happening in Alberta and a few of other provinces from what I read. The tools are there in a document called the Constitution so use them rather than just whining behind a keyboard on Facebook.

Now, don’t hang on, nothing lasts forever but the earth and sky
It slips away
And all your money won’t another minute buy
Dust in the wind
All we are is dust in the wind
All we are is dust in the wind
Dust in the wind
Everything is dust in the wind
Everything is dust in the wind
The wind

I do not to be just “dust in the wind”. I do not want the work I spend my life on mean nothing and be discarded by a provincial government that appears to be completely devoid of morality. I can’t count on my generation. Their existence and comfort is based on what they help build. They are now quite happy (and justifiably so) to live off the accolades of what they helped develop. The erosion of those things mean nothing now but that leaves a whole generations of people who will never knew life before the benefits that began in the 80’s.

I’ll be back…