‘Tis the season for depression
The holidays are often rough for people as well as joyous, and despite much good cheer, depression will plague a significant number of us. Especially this year. Depression is often about loss and we have recently lost so much. We have lost freedoms, brothers and sisters who have been taken from us and sent far away, mothers who have died for no reason leaving grieving children and spouses behind. We have lost security, predictability, a feeling of safety. We have lost our voices drowned out by angry young white men whose sometimes legitimate grievances have overtaken them and robbed them of kindness, generosity and humanity. We have lost our home … the country we thought we knew. We have lost our true leaders, a Congress that betrays us at every turn, ignores the oath they take for us and abandons us to kiss the asses of multi-billionaires, who, by he way, steal our money by refusing their share of taxes and for whom even everything isn’t enough. We have lost acceptance. We grieve for the loss of diversity, inclusion and fellowship. We long for a sense of power and the ability to affect anything. We have traded hopefulness for helplessness and few things are as depressing as that.
Yet I still remain a believer … in the knowledge that better days will come, the insanity that has overtaken us will be purged. It will be a long road and the longer we take to take action, the longer that road will be. That’s why we must not simply protest but fight, with every legitimate means at our disposal, now. The crisis is here already. There is no more “if this happens then I will …” It is happening. The worst corporations, the worst of tech companies, the worst of big oil and the worst of defense are now in an unholy alliance with the worst politicians to seize what’s left of our resources, freedoms, rights, privileges, and dreams. Fight now.
Rick Colson
Northampton