Random Thoughts May 2025

Ted Reads Random Thoughts May 2025

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I was reading about a new drug that was being lauded as a “game changer.”  That meant it would change people’s lives. It made me wonder how much of the angst in the world exists because we see life as a game, rather than the real thing, which, by the way, as far as I know, it is.

A friend spoke to me about standing at the exact spot where his ancestors departed from Africa.  A part of his ancestor’s history of being a victim of the slave traders and owners. He spoke of being overcome by a wave of emotions, mimicking, perhaps, those of his ancestors.

I can relate.  I found myself at a site near Cootehill, Ireland. I stood on the actual floor of the infirmary in the ruins of a “workhouse.”  The very place where my great grandfather’s mom died of the complications of starvation and malnutrition.  As her husband died outside the gate, eating grass, his dead body becoming for a few hours for those still living, a warm blanket.  His body becoming a ‘thing’ to be used by the living to keep from freezing to death, for a few hours at least, during the Irish potato famine in the mid-1800’s. 

From the infirmary floor, I walked to the now overgrown and abandoned mass grave, marked by a small headstone where my great-grandfather’s parents along with thousands of those who died in or near that workhouse are buried.  

If you care to read about that era and the workhouse system in Ireland, you’ll be reminded of concentration camps. Mass graves, ‘thinning of the herd,’ the dehumanizing holocaust of a people.

While millions of Irish people were starving, tons of grain were being shipped back to England to feed the absentee landowners of Ireland.  As I stood looking into the infirmary, and then at the mass grave, and knowing how intentional the starvation and forced migration was, I felt some of the same feelings my friend spoke of.

I’m aware that there are those innocent people that today, right now, in our country as well as the rest of the world are the current victims of the same kind of thinking, value systems, and behaviors as my ancestors experienced. Then, as now, under my Christian nation’s banner.

Back then, a value system that allowed both my ancestors and six million other Irish men, women, and children of common stock to die or be displaced.

If one goes back to the primary sources of the time, they will find that then, just as today, published documents boldly and unashamedly stated the power broker’s intentions. Clean up the gene pool. Sound familiar? Back then, Ireland. Today, America.

I, currently am a collaborator. I wonder how my ancestors would judge my behavior. Perhaps someday I will know for sure, but I am guessing that they won’t have to say a word. It will be a look. The same look I get as I walk or drive past a homeless, hungry man on the street.  While a sizable number of my compatriots ignore, applaud, laugh, cheer, celebrate, high-five, and jeer at the victims.   

I notice that I’ve been throwing a lot of kisses lately. I was wondering about that. I have a hunch, it is partially because I am aware that closing my eyes and actually kissing someone while standing up involves risking of my tipping over; or if lying down, falling asleep before I finish the task. It’s a wonderful way for me to finish a zoom call or say goodbye.

I just read a published research paper that suggests that the degree of income equality is directly correlated to the strength of democracy. Another thing that helps me understand what I am experiencing here in America these days - https://www.eurekalert.org/news-releases/1080444 

“These stairs, OK?”  A question my granddaughter asked as we approached the two dozen stairs, we were about to descend to enter a basement level restaurant. “Yep,” I replied. The next thought I had, but didn’t say out loud was, “I can fall on any staircase, this seems as good a one as any.”

We were driving down the expressway near Columbia, Missouri and the billboard advertisement of a national restaurant chain announced, “World’s Best Pancakes.”  My immediate thought was, “If that is true, how sad, because I have had their pancakes, and if theirs are the best in the world……” 

There once was a restaurant in Detroit that advertised, “World’s Best Fish,” and that wasn’t true either. “World’s Best” always hooks me (no pun intended but enjoyed) in that those words often are successful in getting me to indulge in “it,” whatever “it” happens to be. I wonder why? There is a genetic factor at play here methinks.

I was working with an amazing group of men for a few days. One of the topics we were working with was their partner’s complaints that they (the men I was working with) were not open enough with their emotions. One of the things that came from that work was the thought that my familiarity, comfort with and willingness to share my feelings automatically transfers a palpable sense of compassion to and for others’ emotions.  The sense of “I can relate,” comes from my experience of being able to acknowledge, listen to, and appreciate my own.  I’m of the opinion that my emotions are always trying to give me valuable information.  For the most part I don’t listen until they get so big they explode like a beach ball that can’t be held underwater anymore or come roaring in disguised as something else, instead of recognizing and listening to my fear, it released in the form of anger, or sadness, or need to control, for example. 

I also have wondered what the consequences are for us men of cutting off the most sensitive part, of the most sensitive part of a man and throwing it away plays in this whole “men’s emotional intelligence/quotient” equation.  We know the effect on women and consider it mutilation. 

We also played with the topic of their mortality, which has a similar effect. The more comfortable and familiar I am with my mortality, the better I can sit, with compassion, with yours.  

Several readers of my bi-monthly writings have suggested I have “gone political” lately and that they were, if not troubled by it, not particularly happy about it.

Guilty, absolutely, as charged. My entire life, when I have encountered things that I couldn’t make any sense of always led me to try to find how what I was witnessing, and made no sense to me, was, in fact logical.

A teacher once told me that everything makes sense if my perspective is big enough. So, this last election and its aftermath is one of those things, that based on what I thought I knew about human beings, that I was seeing and heard made no sense to me.

I can always go to the “these people are nuts, or crazy, or non-human,” but that is too easy and inaccurate an answer.

So, yes, I have been focusing on the chaos I have been witnessing in the world of politics over the last few weeks, because that is what is right in front of me, and I am curious to understand how all this makes sense.

That’s what I always do. That approach has never failed me. Including now. Human beings cannot be anything other than human beings, and if they behave in ways that blow my mind, that’s on me for not understanding everything there is to know about said human beings. Politics is but one topic. If you are a regular reader of this “Random Thoughts” thing, you have noticed this. I also wonder about the other ‘taboo’ topics and my culture’s general uncomfortableness with them. Religion, Money, Farting, Nose Picking, etc., etc.  That’s what this ‘Random Thoughts’ thing is all about.   

Obliviousness is a luxury I could indulge in to avoid seeing and feeling everything that is happening around me these days. That may be good for me, it doesn’t help those who are on the receiving end of the taser, handcuffs, empty pocketbook, jail cells, fear. etc.

Obliviousness is a tool that little kids use when they are confronted with something they don’t want to see. If, however, I am the one who lost my livelihood, or cannot feed my children, or afford my medication, obliviousness is not an option.

Some have asked me, “What are you so concerned about?”  Obliviousness works for them, not so well for me.  I’ve always been that way.  Maybe, because more than once, I have been on the receiving end of others obliviousness.  I know that experience.  There are times when I wish I couldn’t experience what I am experiencing.  Fredrick Douglass once spoke of the “Terror of Knowing,” as he was dealing with the idea of human beings being free, rather than slaves.  He spoke of the pain of knowing about freedom being so great that he wished, sometimes, that he would be dead.               

Wonder why not obeying “walk/don’t walk” signs is called “J” walking? While the right thing to do is to use the “cross walk.” How does one crosswalk, actually. What would THAT look like? I actually tried cross walking and nearly fell down.