Peak everything?

It's not the way it used to be. Things were better then. We've blown it. We're losing the war. We're hated. We're running out of oil. We're running out of morals. Glaciers are melting. Oceans are dying. Where are all the bees? Windmills kill birds. We don't relax enough. We don't work hard enough. We don't eat right. We drink too much. China builds one coal plant a day. Iran has nukes. France is cooler than us. Ireland is richer than us. We watch too much TV. We don't watch enough ads. We're stupid. We're idle. We use bad grammar. We chew with our mouths open. We're amateurs. We shouldn't have got that home loan. We should save more. We should volunteer more. We should spend more time with our kids. We spoil our dogs. We can't locate South Carolina on a map. We can't do math. We eat high fructose corn syrup, in everything. We're so dumb, we buy bottled tap water. We marry too young. We divorce too much. We have bad posture. Our idols are false. Our breasts are false. Our foreheads are frozen. We drive too much. We wear stupid shoes. Our president was a baseball hero. Our baseball heroes set a bad precedent. We like the porn. Porn is dead. We don't go to church. We're cultural savages. We eat anything put in front of us. We don't drink enough water. We love money. We hoard posssessions. We accumulate debt. We can't win.

The wristbands I kept. Twelve from six months of chemotherapy. Two more from the surgery, and another from some rigorous penetration in the interim. Fifteen in all. I'm not sure why I did. But i did. And now they're squeezed to the back of my closet shelf, getting buried by the detritus of my life. Business cards, batteries, golf tees, receipts. Seeing the green tags fade away, even by the ridiculously mundane icons that come out of my pockets, feels good.

The pessimism in the air really bugs me. Yes, there are major issues in the world today. Yes, we need to deal with them. But there's no call to be fanning the flames of a cause, just for the satisfaction of a little partisan knife twisting.

I think that's why I like the whole 'greenneck thing.' I think it's why a lot of other people do too. There's a lot of room out there between the Reddest of the Red and the Bluest of the Blue. And in that space there's a lot of common ground for things like apple cider making, blueberry picking, and target practice.

Let's face it. Our generally liberal-leaning city folks could use a little country time. And our generally conservative-leaning country folks could use a little city time.

Maybe then we could all see the glass for what it really is.