Boring Can Be Good

It's so hard sometimes to know what to write about. After all, my own life is so quiet. Not much really happens. I work my job, go home to my wife and grandson. We share the evening together, have dinner, talk, watch a movie, go to bed. Not much to write about there on a day-to-day level. Occasionally, something out of the ordinary will happen, like when I shove the drill through my thumb. But for the most part, I live a very tranquil life, which is just the way I like it. So there's not really all that much to say. And that leaves the rest of the world to write about. Of course, most of what I know of the rest of the world is what I glean from the news. And anyone who reads the news knows that it focuses on all of the bad crap that's going on out there in the world. It never focuses on the good stuff. We never hear about the successes, only the set backs. We never hear about what happens when peace breaks out, only what happens during the war. No one in the news world writes extensively about how life has improved in places like Croatia or Lebanon now that the fighting has stopped. It's like no one cares. Tolstoy famously said that all happy families are the same, but all unhappy families are unique, and that's what makes unhappy families more interesting to write about. I guess it goes for countries and peoples too. And so I'm always thrilled and pleased when I run across blogs from people in these once strife-torn places who are getting on with their lives quite peacefully, thank you very much. It warms my heart to hear that once the fighting stops, the people are able to get back to something like normalcy. The scars begin to heal. Life goes on. We, in this country, haven't got a clue what real hardship is any more. We haven't experienced a war on American soil since 1865, when the American Civil War ended, a war which cost the lives of 2% of the country's population - a staggering figure. Of course, we seem to have no problem exporting war to other places, sometimes with good reason (stopping the Nazis and the Japanese during WWII or the genocide that was taking place in Bosnia and Croatia) and other times for not such noble reasons (Viet Nam, Iraq, et al.). As for me, I'm an arm-chair traveller, intensely interested in what is going on around the world. I despair when conflicts go on and on, especially when my own country is involved, more especially when I don't think they should be. But I rejoice when I see life going on normally, average people going about their business much as I do, working their jobs, going home to their families, enjoying their meals together, lying down safely at night in their beds. Boring? Maybe, but here's wishing we all could have a little more of that kind of boredom.