Houston, we have a problem...Life on Mars looks eerily familiar.

I'll go ahead and 'fess up: the picture has nothing to do with the (long-delayed) post.  It just seemed like this post needed to start out with something bright and cheerful; I haven't posted in quite a while, as I've had no stories which would be very interesting to anyone else or which wouldn't make my niece hate me the second she hits thirteen, so I haven't written.  I finally capitulated to myself, however, and decided to write about something which I've been mulling over quite a bit lately.  It isn't funny.  It isn't witty (not that mine ever accomplish that, but you get the idea.....) It isn't cute.  It isn't memorable. Hopefully I won't make a fatal blogging faux-pas; I guess I'll see what the deep end of the blogging pool feels like.
Ever since I can remember I've been told that I take things too seriously.  My first grade teacher, whom I loved dearly, once told my mother that I was going straight from first grade to the old-folks' home.  Ah, well, 'fish is fish,' it is what it is, I suppose.  (Which anecdote is my way of apologizing in advance for being too serious, by the way.)  As long as I can remember as well the unfairness and injustice of this life has troubled me profoundly.  That people choose to be cruel cuts deep; the fact that some must struggle and never reach the heights others are placed in from the start seems so cruel.  Those who struggle with handicaps of a physical or mental nature, the presence of hunger when others throw away money on thousand dollar clothing accessories, children who must suffer because of the terrible judgement of others, lack of compassion, suffering caused by greed, somehow it all seems to be almost too much sometimes. (Not that I'm saying any of this makes me a kind or compassionate person, mind you, I suppose I'm just a wimp for letting it get to me.)
I was once told that if you don't stay up to date on the news it means you are choosing to remain ignorant of what is occuring in the world around you.  Well, sorry, but I just can't watch the news-I'd need a triple dose of Prozac if I watched it too closely.   So, when I read about the death of a homeless man who intervened on a stranger's behalf (passersby kept walking as they watched him die of exsanguination from his stab-wounds, one individual even rolled him over before walking on), it upset me terribly.  Authorities have recently made three arrests in the murder of a school-principle.  The idea that a car-bomb was left in Time's Square is terrifying, whether it was intended to detonate or not.  Again, I just don't need to watch the news.  Crazy is the only game in town, apparently.  Now, attending four years of college to study history, this does not come as a tremendous shock.  The only thing consistent about the human race, aside from its inconsistency, is the fact that it is overwhelmingly insane.  Period.  There are the creatively insane, who contribute positively; the academically insane, who don't realize that boundaries and accepted facts are unshakeable and therefore discover new things such as a heliocentric universe; there are the comically insane, who make us laugh; and then there are the simply insane.  These seem to be multiplying exponentially, spawned mainly by greed and hate.  A co-worker of mine has recently become very interested in the Holocaust, so we've spent quite a bit of time discussing the topic, and we generally end by asking each other the same things: how can eleven million people be annihilated voluntarily by their fellow men?  What happens within the mind which causes an individual, or a group, to forfeit their own humanity by depriving another of his human dignity and his life?  How and why do people allow themselves to descend lower than the 'unreasoning beast'?  We have the ability to reason and that is the use to which it is placed?
In spite of what it sounds like, we've had some very good discussions.  However, it has only added to the frustration.  Occasionally it becomes wildly and overwhelmingly frustrating that I cannot change the world simply through sheer will-power; the knowledge that I can't fix everything for everyone, or in reality, very little for very few becomes nearly too depressing.  Everyone always gives the example of ripples, you never know how widely they spread, but to be quite honest, that analogy doesn't help much.  However, these discussions have led me to ponder a few things.  I studied history in order to find a field in which I can teach others, whether in a classroom, a museum, or wherever I end up.  History is the collective memory of all mankind, and if correctly studied, teaches us how to be human, whether by good examples or terrible warnings.  Maybe that's a bit idealistic, but there it is.  We are what we have been but also who we wish to become.  History teaches us both.  Very few have changed the world, but many have quietly altered the course of those few.  There are more of the latter than the former. 
All of this 'pondering' has led me to many conclusions.  1. I can't change much for many, but I can change something for someone.  Think of the elderly people lost in the whirl of a modern world.  Smile and acknowledge them, it makes most of them very happy; trust me, I've experimented with it a bit.  2.  There are still those who will make harmful decisions.  I can't do anything to prevent this, but I can do something to help counteract those decisions, even the score.  3.  No kindness, however small is useless or ineffective.  All kindness creates an effect somewhere, somehow.  4. It isn't so important the kind of world I live in as the kind of person I choose to be in that world.
Two of my favorite poems are by Rudyard Kipling and Emily Dickinson.  I've had to go back and read them this week to remind myself of the things I learned from reading them. 

IF-Rudyard Kipling
If you can keep your head when all about you
Are losing theirs and blaming it on you;
If you can trust yourself when all men doubt you,
But make allowance for their doubting too;
If you can wait and not be tired by waiting,
Or, being lied about, don't deal in lies.  
Or being hated don't give way to hating,
And yet don't look too good, nor talk too wise;


If you can dream-and not make dreams your master,
If you can think-and not make thoughts your aim,
If you can meet with Triumph and Disaster
And treat those two impostors just the same;
If you can bear to hear the truth you've spoken
Twisted by knaves to make a trap for fools,
Or watch the things you gave your life to, broken,
And stoop and build 'em up with worn-out tools;


If you can make one heap of all your winnings
And risk it on one turn of pitch-and-toss,
And lose, and start again at your beginnings,
And never breathe a word about your loss;
If you can force your heart and nerve and sinew
To serve your turn long after they are gone,
And so hold on when there is nothing in you
Except the Will which says to them: "Hold on!"


If you can talk with crowds and keep your virtue,
Or walk with Kings-nor lose the common touch,
If neither foes nor loving friends can hurt you,
If all men count with you, but none too much;
If you can fill the unforgiving minute
With sixty seconds' worth of distance run,
Yours is the Earth and everything that's in it,
And-which is more-you'll be a man, my son!


VI-Emily Dickinson
If I can stop one heart from breaking,
I shall not live in vain;
If I can ease one life the aching,
Or cool one pain,
Or help one fainting robin
Unto his nest again,
I shall not live in vain.


With all of these discussions about the Holocaust, the last thing I thought of was a documentary many of you have probably seen entitled "Paperclips."  It was the story of a group of students from a very rural school who participated in a very interesting project which eventually became a national project which then spanned the Atlantic Ocean, reaching to Germany.  In a way, these children completed a circle that was begun by the grand-, or even great-grandparents.  During the second world war, some of those who protested the actions of the Nazis did so by wearing paper-clips on their lapels in imitation of the Star of David which the Jews were forced to wear.  The school-children decided to begin collecting on paper clip for each of the eleven million victims of the Holocaust.  It was a moving sight to see how the lives of so many were changed by the experience.  After the paper-clips were collected, the next step was to devise a way to display them.  Amazingly, they were given an item which suited the purposes and had a profound meaning.  It was a cattle-car, shipped from Germany, which had conveyed victims to the concentration camps.  The clip is from the journey and arrival of the car to the small school; maybe I'm just being a sentimental history wimp, but this part always makes me tear up.  I love what is said about symbols. The fact that something which was used for such a horrendous purpose could now be a symbol of humanity, kindness, forgiveness, even, gives one hope that even in a world where heroes are left to bleed to death on sidewalks, there are still those who give humanity its compassion and decency.  The song is absolutely beautiful to me, as well.  I'm sorry to have put everyone through this, but hopefully now, by putting it in writing, my brain can rest from it a bit.  I promise I'll try to have something funny to write about next time.