The Yin The Yang of Life

(A few things I’ve learned in this life…in no particular order)

 

Life is hard sometimes.  Sometimes it will beat you up, keep you down.  Sometimes it will scare the bejeepers out of you.  But life is also yin and yang.  For all the bad, there are equal measures good.  The trick is to find the balance.  For bad will find you, seek you out, hunt you down.  It is up to you to seek, find, create the good.  Happiness.  Peace.  They’re both there for you in this life, but you have to work to achieve them…

Remember:

In this life you will be hurt.  Sometimes by those who don’t mean you harm, sometimes by those who do.  Forgive the former, forget the latter.

In this life you will be betrayed.  You will be abandoned, cast out, shunned, and rejected.  But you will also be comforted, befriended, admired, uplifted, loved.

You will be inspired by some. Others will be inspired by you. 

You will laugh. You will cry.  You will win. You will lose.  You will feel pain.  Pain of emotional, physical, and mental sorts.  Yet you will also sometimes feel warm and fuzzy.  Comfortable, relaxed, safe.  You will experience elation, merriment, good cheer, and fellowship with your mates. You’ll know the soothe of warm winds, soft touches, the snuggle of a purring kitten in your lap, the whisper of love in your ear.  

Sometimes you will feel strong and vibrant and powerful, on top of your world… indomitable.  Enjoy those times, but remain humble.  Remember humility.  For there will be times to come when you feel weak and wounded, lonely and depressed, feeble, worthless, unloved and anonymous.  Do not give in to the lower moments of your life, but remember the times when you were strong, the mountains you’ve climbed, and tribulations you’ve overcome; draw on that memory to lift yourself up again for you know that strength is always within you.  Allow it to erupt again from dormancy in a renewed volcano of strength.  But do not let that strength overrun and burn and char everything and everyone in its path.  Remember humility.  Always.

You will witness ugliness and inhumanity, war and death.  But beauty and great humanity never abandon us.  When towers burn and people flee, there are always those who rush to, rather than away, who seek to help, to rescue, to save, rather than destroy and hurt.  Humanity never abandons us, even when inhumanity surrounds us. 

You will experience joy, and wonder, and ecstasy.  Sometimes, even fleeting peace and contentment.  But you will also fall prey to humankind’s baser emotions of jealousy, envy, spitefulness, prejudice and yes, even hatred.  Do not hate for it is a waste of your energy. Only your own heart, chakra, or Qi will be affected by this hatred, while the object of this emotion will always roll on their merry way leaving you to suffer and smolder inside.  Give it up; life is too short and nobody deserves to suck such a powerful force from you; reserve that energy for positive applications.

You will do things that you make you proud.  You will also regret moments that do not make you proud.  Don’t waste time on regret.  Learn instead.  And do not beat yourself up for you are human and imperfect, but also perfectly human.

You will make mistakes. You will fail and experience defeat.  You will fall…  And yet, you will also triumph and overcome. You will get up. You will move on.  You will learn and grow.   

Speaking of learning and growing, you will continue to do so over the course of your life. But so will the people who come into your life.  Sometimes this learning and growing will occur together.  And sometimes this growth will widen your differences until you eventually fade from each other’s lives.  This is not the end of either “The” World, or your world.  Wounds will heal and hearts can only hurt, not break. 

You will encounter those who believe their “Faith” is the “Answer” and that you should follow their lead to a purpose that they alone are privy to.  You will also encounter those who do not believe there is anything greater than what they see around them, or that “Science” has “Proven.”  They will both be right.  And they will also both be wrong.  For there is no answer or purpose that fits us all like a magic slipper.  There is only Life.  Each life is to be lived by the individual proprietor of that life.  And each truth is to be discovered and embraced by that individual.

In a sense, we all come from the same place.  And whether one believes that to be a garden of Utopian bliss, or a primordial mud of replicating cells, does not matter.  For we also all come from different places, values, and experiences.  And no matter where we believe our lineage lies, whatever happens after this life is ultimately a mystery to both those who Believe, or Dis-believe.  So do not concern yourself so much with the “Afterlife.”  Live in the here, the now.  Because now is all you got.  Do not plan so much for tomorrow that you neglect today.  The future, your future, will sort itself out in the end.   

Life is full of wonder.  Take the time to feel the cold sea water rush over your toes…and squeal.  Lay down on your belly and watch the bustle of ants about their colony, their lives not so different from ours, each ant an individual, yet working together to make life more comfortable for each other.  Cradle a baby in your arms and smell its new life and listen to its little breaths as it sleeps…trusting you to keep it safe and warm and loved.  

Love someone with all your heart, abandoning your guard for all the times your heart has been wounded.  For love is always a gamble, a leap of faith and trust; do not let those who’ve hurt you in your past continue to hurt you in your present; do not make a new love pay for the lost trust and hurt of those broken loves.  Do not be afraid to love.

Cherish your friends.  Some will move into, then out of your life, for all sorts of reasons.  Cherish them while they are there for you.  For they will need you sometimes…and you in turn, shall sometimes need to lean on them.  Do not mourn or regret those who discard your friendship, they are simply on another path that converged for a time with yours, then diverged again as you both moved on.  I once knew a friend, a wise philosopher, who explained why he did not lament that some of his friends chose to walk out of his life, usually over petty disagreements, misunderstandings, or change of hearts: “There are 350 million people in this country,” he said, “if I need a friend, I’ll go out and make one!”  What a concept.  So simple.  So true. 

Of course, some friends, those closest in your heart, will remain for a lifetime.  You might not see them often, they might even live on the opposite side of a continent.  But as long as they are in your mind, your heart, they are your truest friends.  And they are priceless.  Cherish them.  Smile and laugh with them.  Hold their hands.  Hug and most of all, love them.  Tell them you love them.  That you appreciate and are grateful you have them in your life.  For you will help them get through all this, and they will do the same for you.

Remember that none of us are islands in this life.  For though roiling seas may separate us on the surface, all islands are connected beneath the ocean as part of the mantle crust over the bubbling, magma nucleus of Earth.  Even Jesus and Darwin would agree on that.  We are a communal species, who like that ant colony, need each other to survive, live, and thrive.  So do not seek to demean or diminish or injure one another.  For the strengths and weaknesses we all possess can be employed either to help…or exploit.  And those who currently enjoy success and wealth and prosperity, might someday find the polarity of their world reversed and be dependent on the charity and compassion of those whom they once oppressed, disdained, or ignored. 

Be kind.  Be charitable.  Smile more than you sneer.  Better yet, abandon sneering altogether; it does not become you.  Of course, sneer too often and it does become you…

Wag more, bark less.  Learn and live this simple truth of the dog for he is Humanity’s best friend.  Oh do we have so much to learn from the dog.  Eons ago, we welcomed him into our caves and huts, to sit by our fire, eat our scraps, and extend him our companionship.  And to this day, he remains eternally grateful; he repays our kindness so many, many times over.  If only we could embrace more the best attributes of the dog in ourselves; if only we could heed his enduring lesson of loyalty, faithfulness, and unconditional love.

Control is an illusion.  None of us are in control of our fates.  We can only equip ourselves to deal with whatever fate decides to deal out to us.  And it’s not the cards you’re dealt so much, but how you play those cards.  Sometimes you hold ’em, other times you fold ’em; sometimes you bluff…

Never forget that in this life, we are all terminal cases.  And whether your end in this life comes suddenly and unexpectedly, or miserably and painfully after a long drawn out illness…what I’ve learned is that there are no merciful deaths.  Good people die young, before “their time.”  And old age is not an accomplishment, only the “luck” of the draw.  And yes, I mean to convey that with some sarcasm, as the many deaths I’ve witnessed in my time caring for the elderly population are not merciful at all.  More often than not, only suffering, abandonment, and neglect attends those at the “end stage of life.”  Sometimes it is a product of the life lived by that person.  More often, it’s because the young and vibrant do not allot time in their lives or hearts, they claim their own lives are too “busy” to repay the debt to those who gave and sacrificed so much of themselves.  They forget all those vulnerable years when they were so dependent on the wisdom, strong arms, and comfort of their elders.  I’m here to tell you, if you’re “lucky” enough to achieve your “golden” years, you most certainly will need the strength and comfort of younger arms and hearts.  For each of us is reduced to a diminished, weaker, and more dependent semblance of ourselves in the end.  So try not to forget.  Make the time in your busy life.  Repay the debt.  For what goes around, truly does come around. 

None of us are immune to the basic human need for each other, and none of us are getting out of this alive.  So be there for each other.  Help one another.  As we learned in kindergarten, when the class is on field trip, and we have to cross the street, we do it together…holding hands.  So hold on, stay together… 

Be gracious.  Be grateful.  Be great!

Dream.  Aspire.  Desire.  Yes, desire is okay too, but only if you don’t allow it to overcome or consume you. 

Take it as it comes.  Make the best of it.  Teach your children well.  Make lemonade out of lemons.  Above all, don’t worry, be happy.  For this too, shall pass.

Life is a miracle.  Each birth, each new life is reminder and testament to that truth.  A budding tree in the Spring, a crocus pushing up through still snow covered earth, a litter of yet blind kittens suckling at the warmth of their mother’s belly, a foal’s stumbling first steps on spindly legs…a baby emergent through the dark shelter of its mother’s womb to the bright light of the world…the preciousness, the wonder of it all will continue to astound…if you but open your mind and heart to that miracle. 

So what I’ve learned so far in this life is that:  Life is beauty.  Life is a gift.  Life is temporary.  While you’re here, while you’re alive, utilize this gift, this miracle to…LIVE, LEARN, but most of all…LOVE. 

 

 

Shed Shapes

 

I called them Shed Shapes because they were crafted in the true spirit of the backyard shaper and the longest run of my shaping and glassing days was all conducted in a 6x8 foot shed out in my back yard.   

 

Because of the limitations of this small space, and for the better part of 20 years, I wasn’t able to make a board any longer than eight foot. It didn’t matter so much because at the time, I held nothing but disdain for longboards and longboard surfers.  As my area was overrun with them in the 90’s, I considered them lame and only tools for kooks and old, out of shape has beens.  Of course, as I aged and devolved into a has been myself, I did eventually give in and build an eight foot mini-mal.  To get the blank, and then the finished board, into and out of my “shop” I had to lift the nose up into the elevated gambrel roof, and dip the tail down to the floor and pivot it through the door.  The tip of the nose and tail actually fit in between two studs and kissed the wood of the exterior siding and it was a bit of a challenge to glass the finished shape.  But like all the other boards I’d made over the years, I improvised, adapted, and overcame my limitations.

 

I started surfing in 1974 and shaped my first board in 1975 in the detached garage of the summer cottage my family rented each July & August.  There were no local shapers with whom to apprentice, nor was there any internet or Swaylocks or other mentors to show me the ropes back then.  Not in Maine for sure.  I learned the process, start to finish, all from what I could glean from a blue paperback entitled: Surfboard Design And Construction, authored by James Kinstle and published by: Natural High Express Publishing Company.  I’d found this early board building bible in an issue of Surfer magazine and mail ordered my copy and waited with eager anticipation for the 6-8 weeks delivery.  I still have it, complete with tattered pages and resin stains; it’s probably a collector’s item now.  And though I made many mistakes on that first board, a blue, 7 foot pintail, orange finned gun, including mistakenly laminating the board with gloss resin and glossing with laminating resin (went through about a ream of sandpaper trying to sand that gummy resined board!) I was pretty stoked with my first effort.  Mom was less stoked with the mess I made, especially the resin splatters on the wood floor of that old garage that I’m sure remain there 39 years later!

 

Over the ensuing years, in other garages, basements, outdoors under the shade of trees, and of course in that little shed, I continued to develop my “craft.”  For me it was mostly a matter of economics; I found then, and still today, that I could roughly build two boards for the price of one off the racks in a surf shop.  If I lived in an area where blanks were more readily accessible, I could have bettered that ratio but what always got me was the shipping of blanks from places like Florida, California, and Washington state, to my little corner of the surfing globe in Maine. 

 

I’m the first to admit I am no craftsperson.  My “technique,” based mostly on a lot of trial and error, would make professional board builders cringe I’m sure.  It wasn’t until Swaylocks came along in recent times that I “discovered” how to perform most of the little “tricks of the trade.”  But I’ve developed my own process and while slow and crude, I’m able to produce boards that work.  Shaping has always come a bit easier to me, not because I’m masterful with tools, which I am most certainly not, but because I have a pretty good eye, and I’m not afraid of sweat and blood.  And after 40 years of surfing almost every shape (many of them dogs that I made!) I’d like to believe I know which designs are valid.  Actually, I have an almost curmudgeonly, “Parmenteresque,” (Dave Parmenter, my board design hero) type cynicism and am quite bored with most of modern equipment (and contest driven surfing for that matter!)  I find a lot of what is out there today is either gimmicky, or at the other end of the spectrum, refinement of the same old stale “tri-fin” design to the point of fetid stagnation.  I grew up on single fins and to me, that’s the foundation every surfer should build on, learning to surf the wave rather than the board, which single fins force you to do.  That is not to say that other designs aren’t, or can’t be valid, only that like most everything else these days, kids want to learn how to dunk before they can dribble, juggle before they can execute a basic inside of the foot pass, or boost air before they can put a board on rail off the bottom. 

 

Glassing has always been my nemesis when it comes to board building.  There are so many technical aspects to the process that only years and hundreds of boards glassed can master.  And as I’m often strapped for finances, and only make a handful of boards each year, for either myself or a few friends, it’s taken me decades to reach even a base level of proficiency.  But there’s something to be said for learning things the hard way.  You haven’t lived until you’ve watched a batch go off in the bucket when you’ve still only saturated half the glass on the board with resin.  Or tried to sand a board mistakenly hot coated with lam resin…

 

Many of my early boards were “stripped down” shapes.  These are either old boards, or boards that just didn’t work, that I stripped off the glass and re-shaped into something new, sometimes even using cheaper, boat yard resin, in all its brownish, root beer tinted ugliness.  I still do this today sometimes and call the reconstituted shapes my: “Frankenboards” (I even have a logo of a frankensteinian monster riding a taped and stitched board!)  Sometimes I get ideas for prototypes and test it out this way; one of my current boards is an asymmetrical board that originally started as a high performance longboard; morphed to a “cut a foot off the nose” fun shape; to strip the glass and reshape a 7’6” flat rockered, bevel railed mush buster; to cut six more inches off and reshape to swallow tail; to cut off one swallow and reshape more kick in the tail on the backside rail, along with moving the sidebite (2+1 finset) on that side up for a more forward pivot point, flex finned, flat rockered, flyer!  This board looks weird and every bit as cobbled together parts as did Frankenstein’s monster, but it goes really, really fast on the forehand, and is a bit looser on the backhand and works…for me!  I call it the Platypus model cuz its flat blunt nose looks like the bill of a platypus and platypuses (platypusi?) look like a collection of used animal parts as well. 

 

After all these years, and meagerly improved technique, I’ve reached a point with my board building that I’m pretty confident of turning out good boards that work, though I’m still working on the cosmetic end of glassing.  Trying my hand at tints and resin pinlines, like they used to do in the 70’s, makes me appreciate that much more the level of craftsmanship of the old masters. 

I made two personal boards this boards this summer: an old school log, with a glassed on fin and noooo leash plug (riding a longboard with a leash, to me, is like boosting air at a long pointbreak…and blowing the wave; fugly!) and a 7’6” hybrid shape that was designed to work in nearly all conditions.  The log performed exactly as I designed it and I was able to ride it just how I wanted.  Very first wave, I pivoted off the bottom and cross-stepped right up to the nose, before backpedaling into a drop-knee cutback, some high line trim, and then finishing the wave with an actual kick-out (remember when surfers ended their rides in this elegant fashion?)  The hybrid on the other hand, is a, “jury-still-out” affair.  Not a fan of “high-performance” longboarding (to me, shortboard maneuvers on longboards, with two feet of superfluous nose are not aesthetically pleasing) my intention was to make a wide, stable board that could still execute high performance moves while more readily catching and trimming along the mushier breaks I often have to surf in my area.  But like any compromise design, it doesn’t seem to work so well at either end of the spectrum and in the end is exactly that, a compromise.  Of course, compromise is sometimes the best solution to certain situations so this board remains in my quiver for now. 

 

I’ve not purchased a board off the racks or ridden any other shape that I didn’t build myself since 1982.  I’ve lost track of how many boards I’ve built but every one of them was crafted with the stoke and anticipation of riding something that germinated inside my own head.  I’ve made a fair number of boards for others in all that time as well, but I do it only on the side and more to fund my own projects rather than any kind of income producing endeavor.  I am proud that most of the feedback I’ve received from my “customers” is positive; I attribute this mostly to knowing what works in the conditions of my region, and considering the skill level and experience of the people I’ve shaped for.  I’ve certainly not made a name for myself in all these years, though this past summer I did get photographed and interviewed for Eastern Surf magazine.  Sadly, I didn’t make the cut for the feature on east coast shapers, pros and backyarders like myself, but then, that was never my motivation for building my own equipment anyway. 

 

These days I’ve changed my label to “mo-FLOW surfboards,” in order to reflect my philosophy on a more flowing approach of surfing with the wave rather than merely using it as a launch ramp; I know, kinda old school, hippy drippy but those are my roots.  I also no longer build out of a shed, but have a detached workshop on my property where there is plenty of space to shape and glass and conduct my mad experiments!  It’s been a humbling, yet often exhilarating experience crafting my own designs.  They say that every surfer should try their hand at building their own board and I fully concur.  If nothing else, you gain an appreciation of the true craftsmanship and toil that the professional board builders put into that slab of foam and glass under your feet.  And when you take off on and connect with a wave with something you built with your own hands and experience that magic that only a very small percentage of boards, professionally built or otherwise, can achieve…well, there’s no better feeling in surfing I think.

The Annoying Condescension of Depression & Naivete

 

 

Sometimes my friends, dear close friends with whom I’ve shared deep parts of my soul, well…they annoy me.  Sometimes I wonder if they are listening, or maybe they just don’t hear what I’m saying.  I still love them…but sometimes they annoy me.

 

I have depression.  I’ve had it my whole life.  Usually people say you “suffer” from depression, and I do; I suffer mightily from my depression at times.  But saying you suffer from depression is not always taken as seriously as saying you suffer from heart disease or diabetes or cancer or many other maladies and conditions.  Because depression is a “mental illness,” there are some who don’t believe it is “real.”  They think (quite rightly I suppose) that like other mental illnesses or conditions, that it’s “all in your head.”  They think (I suppose) that you can will it away by simply ceasing to “feel sorry for yourself.”  I have one friend who flatly says: “I just don’t get it.  I hear people say they are depressed all the time, but I just don’t understand it.”  That’s okay, she doesn’t have depression, so it’s not something for her to have to “get.”  But it’s annoying to have it so cavalierly dismissed as a valid and legitimate condition.  Because when it hits hard, you (I) are as debilitated as with any other condition.  And it hurts to have those around you not take it seriously.

 

I believe it is genetic; actually I’ve heard it is quite common amongst people of my Irish and Scandinavian heritage.  But people get confused.  I laugh and joke a lot and seem quite jovial on the outside, most of the time.  But I’m not, always.  John Steinbeck kinda nailed it in his epic novel: East of Eden.  There’s a passage where the Irish character of Samuel is questioning why the Chinese character of Lee, continues to employ his pidgin English even though he is well educated and speaks perfect English.  Lee explains that people don’t expect an educated Chinese person so when he speaks perfectly, they don’t understand him.  Samuel laughs and then explains how it is much the same with him and his Irish humor.  Of the Irish he says: “…They’re a dark people with a gift for suffering way past their deserving.  It’s said that without whisky to soak and soften the world, they’d kill themselves.  But they tell jokes because it’s expected of them.”  When I read that passage it thumped right into my heart.  I laughed at first, thinking how Steinbeck really had insight with regards to “my people,” then after a few seconds, my eyes teared up; the suffering way past my deserving just welled up in me. 

 

Depression sucks.  This past weekend I had off.  Nowhere to go, no one to see.  And it hit me.  I couldn’t function.  I spent most of it near catatonic in my recliner, snuggled up with some wine and my pets and watching TV.  I had no interest in doing anything else.  I did get out in the car and drive around a bit, but with no particular purpose other than to get out of the house.  But I had nowhere to go, nobody to be with.  So I ended up back in my home, on that recliner.  Wasted the whole weekend doing nothing.  But it wasn’t even a productive nothing; I did not feel relaxed or rested…just nothing.  Morose and melancholy and at times even darker…morbid darkness.  It comes and goes like that.  Sometimes I’m better when I’m back into the working groove; it helps to keep my mind off things.  But it always comes back. 

I could try to explain it.  Maybe rationalize that I feel so deeply morose because I care so deeply about things…which is true.  And my life situation…where I’ve been, where I’m at, and where I’m not going, is just so unbearable sometimes.  But my life is not worse than others; better than some.  Depression is just part of my assemblage of parts, it’s my burden.  And to that end, I do not seek answers or solutions from my friends.  Nor even understanding.  I’ve been through therapy, I’ve tried the medications.  I only ask that they do not diminish what I’m feeling.  I once confessed to a friend, some suicidal ideations I’d been suffering.  Her response was a pithy “bumper sticker” quote that I’d heard before: “Suicide is a permanent solution to a temporary problem.”  I know she was trying to inject a lighter air to a very serious matter and I get that; suicide is scary to the people around you.  If you utter the “word,” people don’t want to hear it because they don’t know how to react, what to do, what to say.  I get that.  But there is nothing “temporary” about depression for those who are clinically afflicted.  So a bumper sticker  slogan only comes off as condescending.  And it does not help.

 

I suppose, in a larger sense, what I’m really railing against here, is condescension.  I recently have had two arguments with one of the people I care for in a nursing facility.  Though this man is physically disabled, his mind is intact, and maybe because that is all he has left to work with in his world, it has made him cynical, and even bitter.  And he often comes off as smug and condescending to everyone else around him.

 

One of our arguments concerned a change of administration at our facility and the fact that the new regime came in with all the subtlety of Hitler blitzkrieging Poland.  Hours and overtime were cut, people were reprimanded, bullied and fired before the new administrators took the time to even get to know the people (besides what they READ in personnel files and reports.)   People who had held our facility together for over a year, often working shorthanded, with few supplies, and with no tangible or intangible compensation or appreciation of our efforts.  “It’s all about the money,” the cynic argued when I suggested that the new administrators just didn’t care, not about us, or the people we care for.  Then, smirking, he added, “It’s a business; they’re here to save money for the company.  It is what it is.”  No shit.  As if I’m too naïve to understand.  None of that negates the fact that it’s a “business” that’s supposed to be ABOUT caring!

 

Our second argument concerned a football pool he was organizing; five dollars in got you the opportunity to pick the outcome of all that weeks’ NFL games.  I couldn’t swing the five dollars so instead I assisted (picked every last one of the games!) for a co-worker who knew absolutely nothing about sports and cared even less; she just thought it would be “fun.”  Hmmm, the idea that sports could be, “fun,” how cute!  Of course the blowhard dismissed me and my picks, smirking as always, no doubt on account of the fact that everyone knows that girls don’t know anything about sports, and especially sports prognostication.  And of course…(we) won the pool.  I’d only missed on two picks, both games being upsets.  My friend and I of course both played up our “beginner’s luck” by confessing we’d only picked based on each team’s “outfits.”  In front of the cynic, and an arrogant doctor who happened to be at the nurse’s station while we were discussing the games, my friend and I laughed and joked and high-fived each other saying: “Yay, teal team!”  Both the doc and the bitter man shook their heads in disgust at our, “luck.”

 

Subsequent conversation turned to the “business” of football in particular, and sports in general, when the subject of athletes’ contracts and players’ lack of loyalty in moving from team to team purely for financial considerations.  Again I suffered this man’s condescension as he reiterated what seems to be a theme with him, “It’s just business,” he summated.  “There’s no loyalty; they’re only in it for the money.”  Wrong, Mr. Smug.  Of course, yet again my opinion was not valued because I cared to dispute this “truism.”  And of course, never mind the fact that Mr. Smug never played sports.  Or that I’ve been watching, AND playing all sorts of sports all my life.  Or that I’d taught many of them, and coached one of them for over twenty years.  Oh sure, I never did so on a professional level, but I think I can fairly assert that I KNOW why athletes participate in athletics, and that even on the professional level, it is not merely for financial remuneration.  You do not make the sacrifices to your time, your body, and your heart that you do in sports, only for money, especially when playing for championships.  There are intangibles that too many “armchair” athletes and “never was/wannebes” will never understand.  But what do I know? I’m only a girl.

 

So I suppose what all this is about is naiveté.  Why should I get so worked up about things?  Why should I care so much when almost nobody else does?  Why should the way “it is” sometimes drive me deeper into my inherent depression?  Why not just accept that things cannot be changed?  It is what it is.  It’s a business.  It’s life.  It’s the way things are.  Why not adopt the rationale of a realist instead of suffering the perpetual pain of the idealist?  Bullshit, that’s why.  If there were not those malcontents such as myself who SAW things as they are, but did not ACCEPT them, we would still be slithery creatures in the primordial mud.  I’m depressed because I CANNOT accept stagnation; the status quo.  I’m naïve to believe that things can and SHOULD be changed, that people SHOULD care about each other.  That we’re here for something more than just doing business as usual.  And if it makes me sad sometimes that we’re not there yet, then I’ll happily express my tears…