Mercy! Mercy! That Dang Nabed PERCY!

Politically Incorrect

Politically Incorrect

Often as I drive about in Central Wisconsin in the wintertime I see people out on the ice fishing. They say nothing is better than the fish caught over a hole in a frozen lake. In yesterday’s blog I talked about placid lakes and thin ice and how people like to pretend the world is like a pleasant day, fishing on the ice, talking with friends about all those politically correct things.

Well…, Where you might ask, are all those politically incorrect things hiding as we hear sleigh bells ringing? (Are you listening?) Metaphorically speaking they are under the thin ice we walk every day. Whether we realize it or not, life is a journey, never more than a step away from the deep plunge.

There is a dark side to life as elemental forces, totally without remorse are waiting to return, each of us, to the dust from whence we came. And if that isn’t possible in the short term, these forces are content to steal the bloom from the rose, rob our health, and take away the very means of existence. Things might look fresh and beautiful from the up side of the lake but the down side is cold indeed. Just ask the passengers of the Titanic, who didn’t get into a lifeboat.

Along with natural disasters and the psychopaths getting all the headlines, are a host of lesser murderers, rapists, blue and white-collar thieves, drug dealers and the list goes on and on. In the course of life chances are you’ll get to meet such people and if you survive the experience, count yourself lucky. Organized crime is not what Tony Soprano cracks it up to be. If life is going good, then by all means enjoy it, but don’t take it for granted. There are some bad encounters waiting under the thin ice of our placid social surroundings. Don’t be so quick to chuckle at the little boy who is afraid of the boogey man, asleep under his bed.

By any measure of material satisfaction, human beings have it better than ever before. Our ancestors, going back to the cave man, led a miserable existence fraught by war, disease, cold, heat, droughts, famines and the list of the causative agents of human agony and suffering go back in history, for as long as man kept score.

So in these times of rejoicing take time for celebrating and good cheer, but keep in mind that not long ago, six million poor souls perished under the most inhuman circumstances ever recorded.