“If we think of life as a kind of Olympic games, some of life’s crises are sprints. They require maximum emotional concentration for a short time. Then they are over, and life returns to normal. But other crises are distance events. They ask us to maintain our concentration over a much longer period of time, and that can be a lot harder.”                                                                                                    —Harold S. Kushner

I am deeply troubled these days. I’m blinded by unjust suffering on a global scale and I watch the escalating pain of family and friends from a very personal perspective.

How did our calibration fall so far out of balance? Why must genuinely sweet souls be forced to endure sustained agony while those with evil, black hearts are permitted to swim free in a sea of avarice and insensitivity?

I will never understand the fundamental human hardwiring that values greed and excess over common decency and the general welfare of others. It is a pandemic virus without a cure, and it’s systematically infecting our brains with frightening speed and alarming accuracy.

So…why do bad things happen to good people? Is there really no karmic system in place to level the playing field? Is everything simply randomized chaos without even the hint of some justified cause or effect?

This nightmarish scenario certainly frames society in a context that would cause the vast majority to squirm in their seats, and that’s not even taking into account the titanic religious implications in the lives of those who truly believe there is a grand master plan at play.

As hard as it might be to wrap your head around the fact that we’ll probably not get to the roots of the “meaning of life” debate during this short post, it’s worth considering that our own backyards are the only ones we can clean, and acts of kindness and generosity can easily be distributed one day (and to one person) at a time.

Your pain is never as severe as someone else’s. Your financial situation is never as dire. But your success is never as impressive, and your status is merely an illusion devised by your artificially-inflated ego.

Take a step back and take a step down. We are forgoing a sense of community and compassion at a disturbingly breakneck pace. It might be wise to take stock of what’s truly important…before it’s all lost.

Adolescence Interrupted