Are We Still Here?

I’m confused.  I first heard that Dec.21st, 2012 was the date that the world was going to end because of the Mayan calendar coming to an end (or Nostradamus predicting it, or whatever you choose to pay attention to), and then a couple of days ago I heard that it was actually going to end on Saturday, May 21st, which of course it didn’t. And now I’m hearing that God is actually going to destroy the universe on Oct.21, 2011, five months AFTER the so-called Rapture. Can people get these dates straight please?  If I’m expected to prepare for the end, I should at least know when the end is going to be.

I was happily sitting with my best friends at my dining room table drinking a beer when the end of the world was supposed to happen.  I couldn’t think of a better place to be if the end was near.  The next day, I
searched high and low for stories about the world NOT ending, and barely found a couple.  I guess it’s not big news when the world doesn’t end. They were trying to interview Harold Camping, the minister who led his Christian followers to believe that the Rapture was going to happen at 6pm in every time zone, with massive earthquakes and natural disasters, and only those who believe being “saved” and disappearing up into heaven, leaving even their clothes behind.  The media found Mr. Camping at home, somewhat embarrassed and and expressing his “flabbergast” that it didn’t happen.  Well, yeah.  Someone put up a billboard on some highway in the US afterwards that said simply “Well, that was awkward.”

Some will use this (and already have) as an excuse to belittle all Christians and their beliefs. That, to me, is just as ignorant as following an old man who thinks he can pick the date that the world ends.  Live and let live. I feel a little bad for him, really.  I think this man sincerely believed that it was going to happen, and I think his followers were equally as convinced.  They were not much different from the suicide bombers who were told that if they succeeded in killing infidels in the name of Allah, they would be given the gift of 47
virgins when they arrived in heaven.  Only thing is that you can’t prove they don’t.  At least with the Rapture, we all know the result.  Awkward, indeed.

There is certainly a lesson to be learned from all of this.  And no, it’s not that people who believe in the Rapture or 47 virgins are nuts.  The truth is that the world is going to end for us all one day, although not likely all at once.  We have a limited time on this planet, each of us, regardless of how we believe it’s going to happen, or when.  There were a lot of jokes going around online about what we might like to be doing when the end comes…well, we probably won’t have a lot of choice about that.  But it does make you think about that bucket list.

The conversation at the dining room table at around 6pm on May 21st with my good friends was varied and upbeat.  But we did discuss the fact that we are most of us close to or over the age of 50 and we’re facing the fact that we’d better get going on those things we’ve been meaning to do, or the places we’ve been meaning to visit very soon.  Whether it’s like my friend Crystal who worries that there isn’t enough time to read all of the books she wants to, or some of us who have always wanted to travel to a certain place, or whether it’s just learning to live in the moment, which is my desire;  now’s the time to get going and start doing.

So I’d like to thank Mr. Camping for starting that conversation.  I’m not sorry that his prediction didn’t come true, and I feel bad that he went so far and did so much to convince us of his theory and only ended up flabbergasted.  But if we’re all really smart, we’ll use our time left now, however long it may be, to learn to live our lives more fully.

IJ

(PS - as of Dec.1/25, I can report that we are still, indeed, here)

Let Hatred Die

I was happily watching the only reality TV show that I can stand, “Celebrity Apprentice”, when the station I was watching it on suddenly shared the breaking news that President Obama was going to speak.

I know, why in the world do I watch Celebrity Apprentice? you might be asking yourself.  I normally can’t tolerate reality shows of any kind, but for some weird reason, I like that one.  Maybe it’s watching these famous people make fools of themselves, or maybe it’s the fact that some of them end up being kind of decent after all.  I hate Donald Trump, but I like his show.  What can I say?

Oh, wait…that’s not what I wanted to write about.

I’ve been reading a lot of articles online and in magazines (yep, I still buy the occasional magazine) since the killing of Osama bin Laden, and what his death really means.  Time Magazine had a number of articles from different sources on various aspects of the event, including an interesting essay on the last page called “Where Victory Lies”, discussing what bin Laden was able to change about the U.S. and what he couldn’t touch, psychologically speaking.  There were interviews with those kids (who are almost grown up now) who were in the classroom with George Bush when he received the news about the twin towers, and there was also an interview with Rudy Giuliani on his perspective.  There were a number of opinion pieces on subjects like Pakistan and the CIA and a very good article describing the actual capture of bin Laden.

And recently there was a story on CNN about one of bin Laden’s children who is claiming that international law has been “blatantly violated” because the U.S. basically just went into Pakistan uninvited and shot and killed five people, including the mastermind of the 9/11 devastation.  Well, I can’t really say I disagree with him.  But what do you do?  I mean Osama bin Laden broke many laws, killed thousands of people, and was plotting to do even more damage.  So the international law argument is kind of moot in the wake of all that.

What Osama’s death means and how it will affect everything from now on is only going to reveal itself with time.

But what I mostly fear is a continuation of this old “eye for an eye” attitude, in that killing bin Laden will only inflame certain groups and continue to prolong this “war on terror” that everyone is always talking about.  I mean, look at the Arab/Israeli conflict…it has gone on now for many years, mostly because they can’t stop their revenges and retaliations, which leads to more revenge and retaliation.  The Catholics and Protestants in Ireland, although seemingly at peace with each other, appear to still have some rumblings recently.  Hatred and revenge just can’t die.

Even in the U.S., people hate each other, they hate Obama and consider him a Muslim who wasn’t even born on U.S. soil.  Not even the release of his official birth certificate could placate them.  TV personalities on both sides of the political spectrum have received too much attention for basically inciting hatred, and the killing of Osama bin Laden isn’t going to end that.

So as much as I am…what should I say?  Awkwardly relieved?  Uncomfortably satisfied?…that bin Laden is gone, I think there are far more insidious problems that need to be addressed.  I can’t say I would know where to begin, but hatred is certainly a human problem that we need to find a cure for.  Where is it coming from and why does it exist in the first place?  Hatred is a seed that grows and spreads like wildfire…adults pass hate on to their children, religious leaders teach their followers to hate those who do not follow their religion.  We turn our fears of people who are “different” into a hatred of them without even knowing who they are, we hate people of different political views, we even hate our kids’ teams’ opponents in hockey or baseball! 

It is hatred that comes from ignorance that needs to die.  Bin Laden is a personification of that.  He hated the west so much…the “infidels”…that he spent many lives and much of his money trying to take us down.  He has given a bad name to Muslims, who are as a whole a very peaceful people.  And if we’re really smart, which I know we can be, then we have to start looking at our own lives, our prejudices and lack of awareness, and start making changes.

I know.  It’s asking a lot.  And maybe I’m naive and/or idealistic to expect that the death of bin Laden is going to do much other than to piss a few more extremists off and cause westerners to do anything more than scream “one for our team”, like it’s a game.

But I’m not even going to use the word “hate” in my vocabulary anymore.  I simply dislike Donald Trump intensely.  Doesn’t feel as powerful, but it’ll do…

IJ (Update Dec.1/25 - okay, I still use the word hate...)

Old and Forgotten

Did you see Steve Jobs gleefully announcing the arrival of the second generation of iPad the other day?  Okay, maybe he wasn’t quite gleeful…he does look terribly sick.  But I digress.

I love technology, I use it all the time.  But there are still a lot of people in the world who either don’t have access or simply are not tech savvy.  Lots of them.  Including my Dad.

Now my Dad has never been very good at dealing with anything mechanical…it shocked me to find out that during World War II, my Dad, who was in the service, was in charge of checking the instrument panel of the airplanes they were testing at the base he was stationed at.  I’m sure the people in charge could NOT have known how tech-tarded my Dad actually was.  Okay, they didn’t have that term back then, but you know what I mean.

My Dad is almost 89 and has Alzheimers, and he lives in a care facility.  Since I live in another city, my only means of communicating with him in between visits these days is an everyday, ordinary land line.  A phone, as they used to call them.  I am the one who calls him because he would have no way of remembering my number anymore, and it gives me comfort to hear his voice even if we don’t talk much or for very long.

I had to move my Dad to another room in the same facility the other week.  They only give you one or two days’ notice that the new room is available, so you have to jump on it or give it up to someone else.  When I had him all moved in, I called our local phone company, Telus, to change his land line to the new room.  Of course, I realized that there would probably be a delay and I figured I could live with that.  As it turned out, it was going to be a whole week before they could get a technician out to connect his line.  Why they needed a technician, I don’t know.  There was a phone jack in the room already…but I decided, okay, we’ll wait for the week.

When the day that his phone was supposed to be connected came and went and I still got an automated “This number is not in service”, I called the phone company again.  Well, the technician went out there, they said, but he was told that there was no one there by that name.  Because the bill is sent to me, the tech asked for me, and not my father, even though I explained all of that when I orginally called to set it up.  So nobody did anything about it, and the technician left without doing anything.  I explained again to the customer service person I was talking to, that the bill was in my name but the phone was at my father’s room in a care facility.  They passed me back and forth a couple of times, and finally a customer service representative typed out a new request for a technician.  “Is next Thursday alright with you?” he asked me.  Another whole week before they could get someone out there again??  I was getting mad.  “Another whole week?  Is there any way you can make it sooner?  My Dad has already been without a phone for a week and this is his only way to communicate with his family.”  There wasn’t even an ounce of sympathy in the guy’s voice.  “No, next Thursday is the first available time.”

Okay, so one land line for one old man doesn’t mean much to anybody, I get it.  Phone companies are more interested in their cell phone sales and their big corporate contracts.  A story on the news recently was about the $37,000 bill that one Telus mobility customer received when she went to Africa and used her iPhone, thinking that she had paid for extra coverage there.  That made the news, but one old man without a land line won’t.  I wrote out an angry letter to Telus because there was no email address to complain to, and at the end of the letter I pointed out that by the time this SNAIL MAIL letter got to them, my father would still be without a phone.

Actually, my father and other elderly members of both sides of my family are lucky.  They have people who care about them and make sure they have what they need as they get older and have more difficulty taking care of themselves.  But there are a lot of elderly people out there who are not so lucky, who are put away or kept in terrible conditions.  For example, in a story that came out recently in Toronto, an elderly woman was found unconscious and unresponsive in a basement with NO HEAT in the dead of winter, kept there by her son and daughter-in-law.  How can ANY human being do that to another, especially family??  Elder abuse can happen to anybody, even someone as famous as 90-year-old Mickey Rooney, who recently sat in front of Congress explaining the abuse he received at the hands of his wife and stepson over several years.

And of course these extreme cases make the news, but I think what is even more insidious is the fact that our society as a whole doesn’t have much time or inclination to respond to or even think of the elderly.  Oh, except the scam artists of course.  Yes, old people are really popular with these predators who are trying to scam them out of what little money they have.  I’ve heard two stories recently from people I know whose older family members were the victims of a scam.  If I could have just two minutes with one of those scam artists, they’d…well, let’s just say they’d never be the same again.

Most of us are going to be there one day…at or close to the point where we can’t take care of ourselves anymore.  Hopefully someone will be there to look out for us, but in the meantime I think we can do a heck of a lot more to take care of the ones who so abley took care of us.  If you see and older person somewhere someday who needs a little help crossing the street or picking out some fruit in the grocery store, jump in and say hello.  It’ll make their day, and yours too 🙂

IJ