GOLDEN EDGES

What do you do when you are almost done raising your family? The last of your Mohicans is set to graduate his last year of high school and enter into the workforce! I began planning what I'd do with my free time; what my husband and I could do with the liberation of our sons coming of age. I thought I was going to be jubilant in recouping lost hobbies and beginning new ventures, and for a bit, it was rejuvenating my youthful exuberance! It turns out, that middle age doesn't always provide for the energy, finances and blessed unions that had forged ahead through tumultuous times and demanding schedules of work and family. We both found ourselves in less than agile bodies, depleted energy, and in a state of confusion about what our relationship had evolved into! Is this a foretaste of what empty nest is going to be?

Woodburning had always fascinated me so I thought I'd give it a go—turns out that I am not too shabby at that! Found myself doing puzzles like my mother used to do to try to keep herself sharp! She also got those Reader's Digest books to do the Vocabulary tests and expand her knowledge of words. Now they have brain games to do for memory improvement also! Who wants to spend their golden years meandering aimlessly in the world? We all want to be vibrant and enjoy what is left don't we? So we do things to strengthen our minds and our beloved bodies! Jenny Craig never struck me as an option. I mean who wants to pay someone else for food choices? Can't I just say no? Then there is going to the gym...even when I was a twig in my twenties, I couldn't do some of the stuff these fitness gurus recommend! Having CNN playback all of our profitable years, and seeing we were just as wrong and screwed up as all the generations before us—just made it all feel somehow ridiculous! I mean history really does repeat itself, just in different forms and faces!

One begins to question what their contributions to the world have been. The information age has decimated just about every single thing we concretely believed in, and if you still do; nobody else does! This globalization process we have shifted into hasn't stopped wars, created the Utopian society we all wish for—it just made confusion a larger concept! How many religions are there? It doesn't really matter because humans have thrown out everything that was normal, sensible, and productive...including traditions, common beliefs, and virtues. Mankind is emptier, more unhappy, stagnant and unsatisfied than ever before! I think the thing that is worse for this generation—is they now have no purpose or meaning for anything! Why go to work? Why bother with an interviewing process when most of society either has been convicted of a felony or cannot pass a drug test? What defines normal or morality? How are employers supposed to decide who would actually make a quality product in a reasonable amount of time with the least amount of cost and time—when the youth cannot stay focused on a task for more than a two-second break from their compu-phones? If there are too many felons saturating society that we now have to overlook some; where is our generation going to end up? Let us not forget the families...oh remember them...mom, dad, and child/children—working parents and kids who went to school to get an education? That is now an outdated composition! Nobody works, school is supposed to either teach how to adapt to multi-definitional families and sports is the ultimate learning experience! What is mom or dad, and what is boy or girl...goodness we cannot claim those titles anymore! A parental combo can be two moms or two dads or more....and they can be male or female or both....depending on how they wish to portray themselves! Where is God? I think they buried Him again...

It's election year, oh how are we going to decide who is the Pretty Little Liar, the Biggest Loser, or the Champion Survivor? Maybe we should have asked a Teen Mom to run, or a Bachelor, or a Kardashian and received better outcomes! Well my Golden Years are not going to be the stuff dreams are made of, and probably not my grandkids either...I will be too confused with the New Normal to relate to any of them! I may end up in prison for using the wrong speech or terms for what I used to think was normal! They called one group Generation X who started the ball rolling on globalization, and then Generation Y the Millennials who have no concept about work, money, or boundaries---I guess my generation will be called Generation Z...nothing makes sense, so we might as well go to sleep and see if we wake up and this is all a bad dream!  Hopefully we can Retrieve what is Golden from life while we are here!

IN THE THROES OF POLITICAL REVOLUTION

As I watch Downton Abbey, and relish the story of long forgotten times in history, and read a book about Russian lives in their midst of change after the time of Tsars; caused me to think of the grief of my own country in 2016.  Bernie Sanders made it clear that the young people are rising up in a political revolution, and I realized by his words that this isn't just about the next presidential election!  This is about defeating our "old" country and turning it into something that many white crosses testify--was what they died to prevent!  This election is about the undercurrent of Socialism doing away with Capitalism and what people believe is nothing but rich against the poor.  It is similar to the peasants clamoring the walls of palaces in France and Russia to break down all the "old ways" and grant a better life to the working poor! 

The only problem with this revolution, is that it is not about the WORKING poor!  The working poor are struggling from payday to payday and do not have the benefits of the rich or the 'non-working poor'!  The backs supporting both the upper and lower classes are breaking and Socialism is the added weight to topple the scale altogether!  Who is going to support all these free programs? They say the rich will do it! The rich will not just hand it over as they believe, they will cut their losses by cutting employees and anything to retain their bottom line.  That will put more people out of work and on the 'free' programs.  Does anyone read history at all?   Therein lies the issue, education and propaganda are not the same things!  People are led like sheep to slaughter in more ways than one in our world...some don't even realize they've been taken. 

While I once advocated for feminism, and I do still agree that women should have rights and equal pay for the same job...all the continuous rights through the decades have made us a decadent society.  We are the most narcissistic, opinionated, demanding, and depraved generation with all our technologies and learned experiences.  If everything loses it boundaries, the overflow will result in a flood--and all will be lost.  Decency, couthe, respect, proper language and stations have been altered by filthy free-for-alls who seem to relish in making our great nation a tarnished piece of rubbish...and the world an ocean of vulgar creatures.  There is no sense, no responsibility, no accountability, no line between decency and disgrace.  Soon there will be no purpose for anything, for any reason...and then will step into their thrones the hidden shepherds that took the sheep so far from pasture and safety.  The cries of bleating mammals will fill the air.  The wolves have cornered them all with the lies of 'change'!  Those white crosses adorn the graves of those whose blood tried to save the sheep...there won't be courageous left to stand up.  Those crying for change, won't spill any blood but will submit because they have been enslaved long ago and didn't realize it.  They cry "we the people" but they are not the people who work nor the ones who grant charity to their brother!  They are the ones who sit at home lazily blaming everyone else that they didn't get up and go to school and show respect to their teachers or their elders--they are not the ones who worked at jobs beneath them at a lower wage and managed!  They are NOT  the ones who have given in charity but have stolen, joined violent gangs, entered the thug life of drugs and every sort of evil...they have no need to share with another...they take and demand.  This is not Socialism.  It is a new type of society not experienced by any generation before. 

We the People had better wake up, black or white or brown or Oriental...rich or poor...our world is about to change for a difference no man has known.  There have been dictatorships, empires, democracies, republics, Communism, Socialism--but this new 'age' is one that has never been!  None of the people are going to like where it will leave us!  What pains me most is that no one seems to see it coming...God help us! Oh...even He is rendered a useless figment of our imagination...well who else can we call upon? Therein lies the problem...it sure isn't "We the People" as we are not as such anymore...are we?