This is an attempt to begin a more concerted effort at adding to this blog. What I had thought was the best idea before was to wait for that one big idea, or that one topic that truly got me amped up, but everyday there are things that influence my thinking about the world and cause me to ponder.

The world is pretty fucked up. But there’s always something that shows you that it doesn’t have to be that way. Iraq in chaos, the victim of an American administration that had no idea of the reality of that part of the world. They believe might makes right, or maybe they don’t believe anything except that they are right – which is worse?

But it’s spring here in the northern hemisphere, daylilies are push their way up through the recently thawed earth, and the sun shines down upon us with ever increasing strength. Those sorts of things should make one pause to admire the simple beauty, but also the eminent resolve that our planet has. Renewal and rebirth are inevitable.

We are a pretty dumb species, despite our evolutionary advantages. Given big brains with capacity for memory, both personal and collective, we often forget all that has come before, refusing to learn from the mistakes made by our predecessors. Endowed with a capacity for rationality, we often allow our more animal instincts to win out, reverting to something more primitive, but unlike the rest of the natural world, those animal instincts are often driven by petty emotions, like greed and spite.

But we can learn to put these things behind us. Hutus and Tutsis in Rwanda, only 10 years removed from a incomprehensible genocide, are living and working together to make their lives better, thinking of themselves as Rwandans. The world did little as the Hutus were slaughtered, but despite what seems like an impossible grievance to forget, they are moving on, hopeful that nothing like this can ever happen again.

It may seem that I’m a morose and melancholy guy. Mostly I just listen to too much NPR, absorbing the suffering of the world, and being amazed at how people can be immune to it. And despite this, I love to laugh, but am not skilled and perhaps not even predisposed to write about such things. They are harder to write, like good poetry or a great song. And maybe even harder than either of those two things.