Across the world, immigration issues have been brewing for decades and and racial tensions threaten to ignite vicious race wars in many parts of the globe. Fascist laws imposed to combat this manufactured problem are reminiscent of old Nazi movies where stone faced, black uniformed officers sternly demand: "Papers please!" The Federal Government certainly is on the verge of implementing a shiny new police state that would make George Orwell cower in fear beneath an iron boot. Is the Utah Data center up and running yet I wonder? Meanwhile, Hollywood continues the corruption of our children with hidden messages of sex and violence that run subliminally across theaters, TV's and toy stores. Teen idols are built up as a moral choice only to be corrupted and defiled when they turn 18. Sports heroes are bronzed and idolized only to be revealed as cheats, adulterers, rapists and murderers. Each class of students leaves our dilapidated schools more disillusioned and hopeless than the one before it. A brutal Holy war of radicalization and terror rages across the middle east, it's flames stoked by clandestine instigators on both sides of the conflict. A conflict where fighters from all sides have kicked human decency into the gutter. There are no rules in love and war, and there is certainly too much of one and not enough of the other present in the world today. ON and ON it goes.
The world is indeed a perilous place. It would be very easy to sit in a dark room and bemoan the fate of the world for hours without end. I know that I have spent a few late nights contemplating the meaning of these times and wracked my brain thinking of vain solutions to problems that people won't acknowledge. These are dark times in the world, and we are so often conditioned to fear everything we see on the news about the world around us. Death lurks around every corner, and every news report is laced with fear. But in reality, I am more likely to meet my death upon an icy road in the dead of winter a mile from my house than I am meeting my doom at the hands of a Chinese soldier or a terrorist's bomb. I can see it now. For a split second the cold snowflakes shimmer in the headlights as they drift down from the frozen darkness above, I might lose focus for a split second as a detestable song comes across the radio, and just as I move to change channels; a person who is normally the safest driver in the world gets a text message and skids across the double yellow line, borne upon the wings of fate. Statistics, yet so much more.
Death could truly tap us at any moment, regardless of age, race, religion, class, intelligence, education, wealth or lifestyle there is no escape. There are no survivors left upon this earth. Death will find us no matter how many civil liberties we have relinquished or how much health insurance we have been mandated to buy. The tainted vaccines for diseases we can't pronounce peddled by snake oil salesmen won't save us either. Death will come at the appointed hour at the appointed place and force us to tackle the next leg of our cosmic journey. There is no telling when this time will be. On another day, on another road, perhaps the snow does not fall, maybe the song on the radio does not offend my taste and disrupt my focus, maybe the text message doesn't get through and the safe driver remains safe. Maybe both cars drive off in opposite directions,never to cross paths again on this earth. There is no foretelling when just another breath in and out will become the last breath we will ever take on this Earth.
We are unquestionably placed amidst a world mysterious beyond our ability to understand. The forces that surround us cannot possibly be comprehended, much less controlled by our feeble methods. We drift helplessly through a sea of icebergs. The choices we make are just as likely to lead us to our demise as our salvation. Flip a coin, because the only real choice we have in the end is in how we behave while making our choices. We can either behave Impeccably, seizing each moment as our last and doing much better than our very best at every task put to us. Or we can behave sloppily, as buffoons, carelessly casting each precious chance into the void as we "kill" time. How mournful is the poor man who has squandered his few pennies through foolishness and then complains that he has nothing?
Whenever I get sad or depressed about the current situation, I try to remember that I chose to be here on this rock surrounded by infinity. In this time, in this place, with these challenges. I choose to humbly accept the road ahead of me, meeting each obstacle not as a blessing or as a curse, but rather as a living challenge; met impeccably without applause or complaint. Since all roads eventually lead to death anyway in truth there is but one choice set before us. To either succumb to fear, or to meet that fear with Impeccability in the face of whatever is set before us. For the warrior-traveler who truly walks this daily path with dedication, there is really no choice at all, just Impeccability.
