I struggled with going to sleep last night.  Finally just got up and started jotting down the random stuff floating around in my brain.  Tired and underenthused about dealing with life today…

“Welcome to the innerworkings of my mind”…for what it’s worth here’s a sampling of my thoughts:

• Just because you don’t agree with someone doesn’t mean they are wrong (or right) – it just means you don’t agree with them.
• “Those who fail to learn from history are doomed to repeat it.”
• How much money is it going to cost to try and remove Robert E. Lee’s name and image from schools’ and everywhere else?  Maybe we could find a better use for that money?
• Not all racists are violent.  Not all Muslims are terrorists.  Not all “whites” are entitled.  Not all of Mexican heritage are illegal.  I could go on and on.  Maybe we should just start treating people like people.
• Maybe some people just need to get over themselves.  Your childhood sucked.  I’m sorry.  That was then.  This is now.  When are you going to make it your life and start living it?  Sitting in the past and feeling sorry for yourself is stupid.  This applies to everyone including myself.  Get a life, literally.
• Sometimes people can do great things in their life and bad things.  The bad doesn’t always cancel out the good.  That’s a good thing ’cause I can’t think of a single perfect person I know.  We can try to tear down our heroes by pointing out their flaws all day long.  All that does is leave us with nothing.  Maybe we could just acknowledge that a human can do something great and heroic and then screw up.
• Speaking of heroes…let’s bad mouth Abraham Lincoln, Robert E. Lee, Martin Luther King Jr., the police officer next door, and anyone else you can think of who actually tried or is trying to make the world a better place (whether you agree with them or not) and let’s exalt “celebrities” who are actually doing jack-shit except having a big butt or getting drunk or doing nothing whatsoever that is productive.
• I like my chickens.  I could watch them for hours.  They have a very interesting social order.  They get along beautifully.  They may not be very smart, but they learn from their mistakes.  If you acquire two groups of chickens at different times (they weren’t grouped together as very young chicks), they will never really socialize together well.  They may hang out together and fight over the same grasshopper, but in the end, they prefer their own grouping.
• Having the right of free speech doesn’t mean you need to exercise it all the time.  It’s also good to know when to keep your mouth shut.  There’s a difference between standing up for you believe in and just “stirring the pot” to get a response from people. While some folks are making a lot of noise, others are quietly actually doing something about the problem.
• No matter how bad you think your life is here in These United States of America, you are still probably better off than a lot of others living somewhere else.
• There is always going to be someone who is “better off than you”.  There is no such thing as having it all.  Anyone who is ridiculously wealthy or powerful  sacrificed something in order to get where they are.  They may be looking at your life and wanting something you have.
• Why do some things ignite a passionate outcry among people – and other things just fade away in the news.  Thousands of garment workers die in Bangledesh factories and yet we keep buying cheap T-shirts.  Good men and women working as police officers die doing their job and we only make a big deal of their “victims”.  Soldiers die serving their country and we never hear their names.  Thousands of people die around the world because they are trying to worship as they believe, but nine seem to outnumber them.
• We spend more time and resources arguing over terminology and semantics than we do really trying to solve the problem at hand.  Hate crime?  Terrorism?  Isn’t the taking of a life hateful and terrifying enough?  Do we have to define it further?  Murder is wrong.  No matter who does it.  Or why.  Wrong.

There you have it.  When it’s all in writing, I can see why I was having trouble going to sleep.

At the end of the day, it’s important to remember that lots of good stuff happened in the world today.