January 12, 2022
I know it’s definitely winter
when I dig out the few pairs of thick, dark blue men’s very fuzzy socks that
David gave me a couple of years ago. Regular socks worn with high over-the-ankle
slippers simply just don’t cut it when it’s deeply cold the way it’s been here
the last few days. Thanks to the arthritis, when my ankles get cold, they don’t
feel cold to me unless I touch them with my fingers. They just hurt.
I resorted to those socks on
Monday when the temperature was “14 Fahrenheit but feels like minus 4.” They
absolutely made a difference. I wore them again yesterday and I’m thinking that
for the next few days at least, they’re going to be my new best friends.
With the arrival of January
comes the return of a some good prime time television programs, so I have more
than the option of watching the cable news networks in the evening—theoretically.
I’m trying to focus on reading in my off-writing hours, and not watching so
many doom-and-gloom cable news presentations. The constant hair-on-fire admonitions
can really wear a body down!
When our kids were younger,
weekends were a time when we’d head to Blockbuster Video, and each kid would
get to pick a movie—and that was how we spent the weekend. We’d watch those
movies as a family, and sometimes twice. But in the last, oh, ten years or so,
I have lost my taste for watching movies. There are a few I’ve gone to the
theater to see (pre-Covid, of course), and a couple I’ve watched since, but at
home. But mostly movies just don’t appeal to me anymore. I wish I wanted to
watch more movies. With all the streaming services available there are movies
galore one could watch and never view a news program again!
In the interest of complete
transparency, I must confess that there is currently one exception to that, and
it’s not a movie, but a “live capture” of a Broadway play that’s available only
on Apple TV plus. I know I’ve mentioned it to y’all in at least one previous
essay. The name of the production is “Come From Away”. I’ve watched it, oh,
maybe a dozen times since last September. It helps that it’s a musical because
I always have loved musicals.
Lately, I’ve been more than a
little annoyed with the propensity for people—people who I have to figure were
raised better—to lie. And not just to lie to their neighbors and friends, but
to the world at large, and on social media. But what I am really annoyed
with is the way so many people seem to believe the lies being told. There is an
entire massive chunk of the population that has not been blessed with what I
consider to be a vital characteristic: discernment.
Discernment is an important attribute/skill/trait
to cultivate. You don’t have to be born with it the way you do with a talent
for, say, music or writing or making an inviting home. It can be gifted to you,
of course, but you can develop it if you have a mind to.
How many of you recall a time
when mom or dad would get after you for following along with some lamebrain thing
that one of your friends did, with an admonition that sounded like: “And if Ted
jumped off a cliff, would you follow him then, too?”
That was your parent’s attempt
to help instill discernment within you.
But from what I’m seeing with
regard to societal trends especially with regard to social media? There are a
whole lot of people lying and a whole lot more folks willing to follow those
bad actors off every kind of cliff you can imagine—metaphorically speaking.
Now, I earn my living through
the sale of eBooks. I owe a lot to this online medium, this internet, I really
do. But there are times when I wonder—would it really be so bad if we
suffered a major CME (Coronal Mass Ejection) and this technology went poof?
Of course, that’s just my irritation
talking. Since it would, in fact, be bad—there are likely so many everyday
things that are built on the back of the internet and its attendant technology that
if that went for a dive, we’d all be in very real trouble. So, no, I can’t pray
for the internet to vanish just to stop the rabid spread of horse puckey and
bull hooey on social media. (Although there is a part of me that wishes I could
because, man, that stuff is getting deep.)
Thus, it’s up to me, and me
alone to monitor my own intake of mind-waste. And since I do have a healthy
sense of discernment, separating the wheat from the chaff in life isn’t a
particularly difficult thing for me to do.
It is however—and especially lately—an
onerous, boring, never-ending task.
Love,
Morgan
http://www.bookstrand.com/morgan-ashbury
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