Happy New Year to all. I sang “We Wish You a Merry Christmas” several times over the holiday. A wish can be an outcome  we hope for even though  many times it is an unattainable goal.  Stupid of course but it still feels good. We can also wish for some evil to befall our worst enemies. Revenge is so sweet. We are an equal opportunity donor for both good and bad. 

Sometimes we wish we hadn’t done something. A particular act or deed that didn’t turn out too well. A bad trade or a not so nice relationship. How many times do you ask yourself,”What the hell was I thinking?”. Or, “I wish I was dead?”  Really? Actually when you do something really stupid or find yourself in an impossible situation, death might be the more attractive alternative. Not really. 

Wishes have either future or past attributes. Real time is far too sobering. They are fantasies in a way and as such unrealistic. We spend a lot of time in the past. “If only” can rule our world. Second guessing becomes a way of life for some. Every now and then is fine but we tend to be somewhat obsessive. If I rethought every idiot move I have made overt he years I would never get any sleep. Possibly an early trip to the funny farm. 

This of course breeds victimhood or self pity.” I coulda been a contender” bemoans Marlon Brando in On the Waterfront. His brother screwed him. The world screwed him. How many Terry Malloys have you met over the years?  

The other side is always thinking forward. We wait for a positive outcome. Good if you work your ass off to attain but bad if you lay back and wait for the lottery of fame, fortune or even golf to visit your domain. I would never want to rule out hope for any situation. But hope requires an honest evaluation of who and what you are to define achievable. That is elusive. 

Some of us are Pollyannas or partake in the Peter Pan complex. “I won’t grow up, no never not me.” Take yours truly. I like to have fun and joke around. Revelry could be my middle name. But when the rubber meets the road I tend to get very pragmatic and see the writing on the wall. Nothing heavy duty but realistic. And perhaps that is the crux of our problems today. 

At press time I am witnessing a come to Jesus moment in the House of Representatives. Kevin McCarthy is scrambling to find more pro votes. Doesn’t look like it is going to happen. Does he wish he had done this or that? Of course. Will he accept defeat? We will soon find out. 

The extremists on the left and right are dug in to the point of no return. They and in their person, we are dreaming the unreachable. We have to pay taxes but it is not a bottomless pit. We need to provide services but we have our limits. I would love to provide every citizen the most incredible healthcare but we can’t in a practical way do so. Money, facilities and medicine are finite. People have to be proactive in their own welfare. I don’t see that happening. Oh,I forgot we are going to have a special pill to cure all. 

We are witnessing the life and death situation of a young professional football player. In the worst of all worlds he was in the the wrong place at the wrong time. Yet nothing is spared to try to make it all good. We could not have responded and more quickly or competently. Can we do that for the rest of us? We can hope and wish but I think we know the answer. 

Putin wants Ukraine. China wants to rule the world. Musk and Bezos want to go to Mars. We have Republican and Democratic agendas. This area wants development while the locals want a quiet hometown. The military wants more and more weaponry. The progressives want peace not war. Parents want to have their children learn but on their terms. We want to end homelessness but not in my back yard. It almost seems the more we wish for the harder and harder it is to find agreement. 

I am going to hope, wish, dream or whatever you want to call it in 2023 that somehow some way we come to our senses. If we all took a long look at our lives, our relationships, our ethos, our position in our country and our world and were brutally honest how would things look? Not just it is wonderful thought Ted but really sat down and took stock. Parse out what is real and what is bullshit.

 Give up some of those sacred cows or at least question them thoroughly. Understand you cannot be 100% right all of the time. Bend no matter how bad it feels.  Forget about the past unless you are willing to learn from it. Look to the future after you have thrown away your rose colored glasses. That’s hope with a purpose. Thanks for listening to this poor schmuck for trying to make sense of this. 

As Always

Ted The Great 

Factoids:

“Unlike other animals, humans spend a lot of time thinking about what isn’t going on around them: contemplating events that happened in the past, might happen in the future, or may never happen at all. Indeed, mind-wandering appears to be the human brain’s default mode of operation.”  Harvard Research Gazette

Humans think about other than the present about 50% of the time.

Conspiracy theories, wokeism, victimhood, extremism are part and parcel of our attempt to frame our world. The world is neither fair nor perfect. Wish it was but it ain’t.

Politicians will tell you how they can fix their opponents wrongs. They will weave dreams of the future. They take all the credit and admit no wrong. They rarely deal with reality and give you a candid analysis of the present. A vote you can believe in.