2 Teens Charged In Landry Case - Detroit Local News Story - WDIV Detroit

It seems that every day we hear more and more stories of senseless violence being perpetrated on innocent victims.  Some like to blame it on the economy, but this story can’t be about that.  It makes no sense.

I can see a random robbery or even a car-jacking during hard times.  But to murder someone, for no apparent reason, even when it goes against reason and logic, let alone morality, just makes no sense to me?

I guess I have to believe that drugs were involved, that no one in their right mind would kill someone for no apparent reason.  I don’t know if I believe this because I want to protect my own sanity, or because I really believe it is the truth.  I suppose I don’t want to live in a world where you can be snatched from a Wal-Mart parking lot in the middle of the day, in the suburbs no less.  I even give them my car and everything I can get from my ATM, and still they kill me.  It has to be substance abuse, or a drug deal gone bad.  Please let it be just that.  Sad as that is.  Please let it not be a generation of straight men who are learning to care little for anyone, except themselves.

The heterosexual male is probably one of the most dangerous creatures on our planet today.  If only something can be done about these people.  When they aren’t out killing their wives, girlfriends and exes, they are nabbing folks from parking lots in the middle of the day and killing them.  Or walking into a fitness center to shoot and kill women, just because they can’t get a date.

Maybe one day our society will be run by women and gay men and the only things we might have to fear in the ‘burbs are crimes of fashion and bad taste.

2 Teens Charged In Landry Case - Detroit Local News Story - WDIV Detroit

On Getting On

No, this is not a picture of me. Not even twenty years ago. I just wanted to get everyone's attention. I hope it worked.

I was thinking (that happens every now and then) about this whole aging thing. It hit me when I turned forty, then really hit me when I turned fifty. Now that I have had so many friends and loved ones die of cancer and other diseases, it has knocked me for a loop. These people were all around my age. I always thought they would be around forever (just like me-I hope). Now I have to go on without them. It all leaves me feeling totally confused and kind of empty inside.

I see my parents, who are both turning 83 this year, talking about having to go to so many funerals all the time. Yet, they never seem to lose their enthusiasm for tomorrow. I don't know how they can look at a news story about what may happen in the next ten years, and not think that they may not be here then. I can only hope that I will be that way when I am their age. I know that worrying about tomorrow can become a full time job for some seniors, and I don't want to be one of them. Besides, it does absolutely no good to worry about it. We all need to plan for the future, but not obsess about our own mortality.

Now if I can only live by these words, not just say them. If I can just keep singing a song from the Rent soundtrack, No Day But Today. If I can stay focused on today, just getting through, maybe I will make it to a happy retirement (260 days and counting).

Running Away

Have any of you ever thought of just running away... from your life? I think it is something many of us feel from time to time, wanting to be free of all the problems and worries in our lives. Sometimes even wanting to flee from the people in our lives.

I have felt that of late, wanting a new beginning. Being able to start life over with all the lessons I have already learned would be the ticket. Avoiding all the serious blunders in our past, choosing the road not taken. You have to wonder though if anything we do can really change our fate. Are our lives not already pre-ordained for us?

I am a strong believer in fate. Both the good and the bad. Sometimes I think that our lives are already pre-set. The day of our death can not be changed or avoided, it will come when it is the right time. The choices we've made in life were all in the plan that fate (or God) had set for us. It certainly makes you feel powerless sometimes.

Then there are those who believe that we make our own destiny. The two schools of thought are not mutually exclusive. You may have been pre-ordained to be a person who takes life by the short hairs and runs with it. You may think you're in control, but it's your life's plan being played out, as scripted.

If you have a strong religious faith you may call it God's Plan. Others may call it fate. Calling it God's Plan does make it seem more palatable. To feel there is a guiding hand, someone or something that has your best interests at heart and will lead you to a happy ending. Fate does not necessarily have that happy ending component. I find great comfort in the God's Plan theory. Even though I am mostly an agnostic.

No matter how you slice it though, it seems pretty amazing, and frightening all at the same time. Every day a journey, whose script was written long ago.

But getting back to the running away theme (above), there is a song in Into the Woods called No More, where a father and son are discussing running away from their lives. The father sings to his son, "the trouble is son, the farther you run, the more you feel undefined". He concludes by singing, "where are we to go, where are we ever to go". The moral of this tale, and our own, is that you can't really run away from life, we are who we are and nothing can change that.