Monday Morning at 3.00 AM...

So what in the name of Ghod am I doing up at 3.00 AM, writing blog posts?

It's simple really. I've been sleeping more than usual. Whatever my body was doing, I went with it and now I am awake, feeling physically better than I have in some time. Who knows? I'm just here for the ride. I must have had a fever because it broke before I knew I had it.

And at this hour, there's not much to do but sit here quietly and read email. I am signed up on several email lists through Yahoo, the ones where people write in about a variety of things. The list that has been producing the majority of the messages is not a topical list. It's a free-for-all and people write about anything that grabs their attention in the moment except of course, the things that matter.

The majority of it seems to be about daily troubles of one nature or another. Personally, I find it very hard to respond to such things because open bids for sympathy are rather unseemly. There's a big difference between seeking collective wisdom and seeking sympathy. There's also a big difference between working something through and mindless bitching. Working it through and seeking wisdom is a participation exercise. We all get to be involved, to think about the situation and come up with meaningful responses.

The lists are overwhelmingly the latter. People natter on about every petty thing that might go wrong in their daily lives. And somehow, they manage to make it sound tragic.

This got me to thinking ~ which is rather unseemly itself at 3.00 AM but natural inclinations prevail once again.

To me, "tragedy" is a child who lives in a home where the parents are drunks or drug addicts who burn them with cigarettes. Tragedy is thousands of young men and women being killed in a war that has no purpose beyond protecting the business interests of greedy men and women who want to insure their continued wealth. Tragedy is people who are forced to live and work in inhuman conditions because they don't have the power to rise up against their oppressors. Tragedy is not having clean drinking water. Tragedy is a life wasted because someone committed the unpardonable sin of being born poor.

It wouldn't occur to me to engage in the kind of mindless griping that takes place on these mailing lists of privileged, mostly white, middle-class suburbanites with whiz-bang computer systems in their climate-controlled dens. I'm familiar with it. I grew up surrounded by the 90210 mentality that demands pats on the head and recompense for the most minor inconveniences.

It strikes me as self-indulgent and silly. It's taking every ounce of self-restraint to not reply to these messages with a copy of this blog post.

What say you?


Peace,


~Chani