Musings of a Dumb Ass

Musings of a Dumb Ass.... A few years ago one of our children was having a hard time with life. The problems were all self inflicted but as they grew behaviour got worse which caused troubles to grow and compound. Finally one day we got to a place that a reasonably intelligent and objective conversation occurred and the door opened for me to give some 'old mans advice'. It was simple but profound, which doesn't happen with me often. We had arrived to the blame stage in our conversation but none of the blame could be accepted by our child, nor could any misbehaviour paramount to bringing on problems be recognized by our Einstein, only the shortcomings of others and wonder that the whole world could be so blind. My advice was to consider honestly what one would see if one could literally step out of their body, move away 5 steps, turn around and see themselves, as an observer. It wasn't long before realization started emerging about how another could find oneself unnattractive in behaviour and spoiled in demeanor. One truth will beget another truth and with just a sprinkling of honesty soon the right way to do things will light your way. As citizens of the world, we should step out of ourselves long enough to see how we really act and recognise the folly of what we do and what we expect of the rest of the world. We were smart enough to recognize the folly of the Berlin Wall and smugly told ourselves it was to keep the Easterners in. But once it came down and the curiosity of those behind the wall was satisfied most of them went back home. We all knew walls never kept anyone in or out very long. So how have we conducted ourselves? Much like the Russians of the cold war and the Chinese behind their ancient wall that didn't work either so long ago. Our plan now is to fence in Baghdad with moats, canals and wire. With all our might we can't stop the civil war we've created in Iraq and neither can we defend even a five square mile of an area we call the green zone inside the city. We can't leave our compounds without being blown up by roadside bombs planted by unknowns. Iraq has no military as our foe, only the civilians that were supposed to cheer us as we drove by. We have no clue why this is so. The very best explanation we can come up with is "They want to kill us because we're Americans" or "They hate us because we love freedom". While we're trying to sort that out, maybe we can come up with a sure fire plan for our place in the sun, while like idiots, we can try to figure out some equally lame slogans while we're building a fence between us and Mexico. We need to step out of ourselves, take five steps, turn around and watch ourselves awhile. We may be too far gone to understand what we'd see................