Bathroom of the Right

Sometimes, I simply don't know what I think I know. I get these ideas that just seem to make so much sense and then....wham...out of nowhere... something comes along to make me question everything about my original thinking. That sets off a whole litany of WTF issues for me. It makes me question many of the whys, whats and wherefores which, over many years, have accumulated in my brain, much like the old vines that used to cling to the trees in my back yard.

Ok, so in my typical meandering thought pattern...here we go. I used to think that once a person reached a certain age, they would just naturally inherit a deep sense of wisdom and grace. Now I realize this just ain't necessarily so. It can happen...I've seen it happen, but I've also seen the total opposite. I've watched folks get older, but instead of getting wiser, they seen to get dumber. Instead of getting kinder, they become more greedy and selfish. Instead of expanding minds, it seem their minds are getting smaller and smaller and scarier and scarier.

Back to this simple fact: I really don't know what I thought I knew.

Take our country. The United States of America. As the daughter of a Navy man, I grew up in a Stars and Stripes kind of environment. Quite simply, we believed in our country. We believed in John Wayne, goddammit, and we were taught to hate Commies, the Japs, and anything that challenged our idea of America. But, as I grew older and became more aware of the flip side of certain issues, I began to think...are we really what I though we were? And, as we digress from one war to another war, I am more and more concerned about, not only, who we have become, but what we were.

Meandering a little further...religion. I grew up Methodist and attended MYF. After marriage #1, I switched to Presbyterian and taught Sunday School where I got called out for not following the "Predestination" dogma. I dared to suggest to my class (grades 5-7..ish) that there was a little bit of free will there and if they could find their own path, it might make life a whole lot easier for them. Ooops!

Maybe I take things too literally, but I thought if you were a Christian, at least a true Christian, you tried to live by the teachings of Jesus. The older I got, the more I realized how terribly naive I was and finally, I realized I couldn't really call myself a Christian anymore because I was no longer sure just what it meant. I still don't know.

Meandering back to the vines....they have their own life, you know, and it's a selfish one because their survival depends on the tree they occupy. They don't offer anything in exchange...just take and take and take. Eventually, they kill the tree and it's a slow, smothering kind of death for the tree because it restricts, and eventually, prevents the tree to grow. The tree has no room to spread it's beautiful branches because the vines weigh them down with their own agenda. If one, be we tree or person, loses the opportunity of growth, we eventually die, right?

I feel like we, and I mean the global we, are being smothered by the vines. We've drunk way too much of the kool-aid...all of us...whatever our religion, or lack of...whatever our political affiliation...whatever our whatevers...essentially, we've lost our way.

There's an old Creedence Clearwater Revival song called "Bad Moon Rising". For years, I thought the bad moon out tonight was the bathroom on the right, and when listening to the lyrics, it all made sense. Well, as much sense as a whole lot of lyrics make. Then, I read an article about the people who though, just as I did...the bathroom on the right. Huh? How can I be so wrong about the lyrics of one of my favorite songs? However, it was kind of nice to know that I wasn't the only one who thought that...I mean, stupidity loves company, right?

But, I guess it also left me wondering about the many other things I thought I knew. And the wondering goes on. Maybe what we're really all about is...the bathroom on the right.