Just an Idea

Countless words have been wasted in responding to the political situation of our time, criticizing all the errors, rebuking the miscreants, slandering those on the Right and the Left, and otherwise drawing attention not to the Good, the True, and the Beautiful, but to the Bad, the False, and the Ugly.  These are the times in which we live: the times in which the mainstream media, along with all the offshoot resistance media outlets, rely on fear, alarm, and other negative emotions to draw us in.  Such emotional hooks plunge us further into the divide.

These past months, especially since the coronavirus arrived on our shores, leading to extensive lockdowns mandated by the government, have brought a new array of dramatic stories to our attention.  I need not repeat those.  Anyone who has seen the news in the past months knows what they are.

Rather I want to bring your attention to a certain issue and propose a solution.  Perhaps I may be biased due to earning my bachelor's degree in drama, but it concerns me that months of theatre productions have been cancelled, leaving actors—who already struggle to make a decent living from pouring out their hearts in becoming some character or other for your entertainment and edification—unemployed, facing the real possibility that months or even years may pass before they can give themselves again to their work.

There is the issue.

Now the solution: could not these actors be hired to perform more exciting stories that the media could present to us?

Let me explain further.  I have heard several people remark upon how watching the news brings them down and I suspect that reflects the experience of more than a few people.  Yet people keep going back again and again to the news.  Doubtless they will continue to do so.  Consequently, they will keep being dragged down by the rising numbers of coronavirus cases, the violent protests, murders, police shootings, and so on unless something changes.

The change is what I propose.  Rather than focus on the negative, what if we focused on the positive?  What if the media told stories meant to bring us hope rather than fear?

If I had the money for it, I would be seriously tempted to follow through with what I propose, but since such funds lie far outside my means at present, I will merely proffer the idea in case it should happen to come to the eyes of someone who does have such financial weight.  Let me therefore state the idea again most simply: to hire actors to act out stories that would give us hope.  Let them show us actions of heroic virtue.

Perhaps I dream a dream too lofty when I dream of all the good actions that could come from those seeking to imitate these beautiful stories and acts of virtue.  Yet I will dream it and invite you to dream it with me and perhaps someday a piece of our dream might come true.

If you would like to participate in this dream, please share your ideas for scripts in the comments.  What would you like to see the media portray through the talents of all our nation's best actors?

Me, Myself, and I Muse on Cynicism

I: Those wiser than I would have it that age must of necessity bring cynicism; but I, perhaps through fault of youth, must disagree.  Cynicism seems rather the result of a loss of hope, a small step forward on the path of despair.  Must I, simply by repeated and unwilled rotation about the sun tread down that path?

Myself: Well becoming a martyr might offer a simple alternative.

I: I don't believe that is in my power.

Me: What after all is so bad about cynicism?  Is it so much to be feared?  Perhaps it lends its weight to the wisdom of the aging.

I: Is cynicism then the cost of wisdom?

Me: The two oft seem entwined.

Myself: 'Tis a petty price to pay if it were for the greatest treasure of all, as doubtless wisdom is.

I: Yet I would not pay it.

Myself: Then have it not.

Me: How harsh a saying.  Perhaps you have already begun to taste deeply of the well of cynicism.

Myself: Nay, but a certain healthy cynicism keeps one from expecting too much of others, like a dash of salt upon a meal.

I: There is truth in that.  I, by nature, am certainly inclined to cynicism: I expect the worst, but still hope for the best.

Me: Hope—there you have the key of it.

Myself: As long as the key opens a door, I find no fault with it.

I: If I look at Myself—

Myself: I?

I: Yes, I that is—I cannot help but see that flawed and cowardly as I am, there is no hope and cynicism is the natural response.  Certainly a lifetime of effort spent in exhausting my strength in seeking to produce some fruitful change in the world would leave me as dark and gloomy a cynic as ever was.

Me: Then not to become a cynic must mean the existence of something beyond Me.

Myself: Granted.  You need only look about you.

I: Hope grounded in the world, in mankind, in Myself is worthless.

Myself: Sadly, true.

Me: Open the doors then to the world beyond Me.

Myself: And Myself.

I: And I.