I feel some returning elasticity to my mind, these days. A continuing conflict, for sure, but a battle that must be thought.

I considered it a high priority to spend the last few months on intake. To listen, to the voices around the world crying out to be heard. And being mindful of those less heard. To pay mind and perspective to the fellow humans that share this rock with me and mine. We are, whatever your beliefs, in this together. With all the chaos and conspiracy and distrust. With the hate and pain and ache and woe. With and through it all, together we be. For as far as anyone can definitively say for sure, it just us in this world.

Though, after reading a few articles, it has been low-key revealed that ‘off-world’ vehicles are in possession of at least one large world government. But that’s not for tonight’s tackling.

This evening, I think of the personal calls for my own silence. For certain, events of late in my own homeland required patience and understanding. A still on-going effort. And for some things, it was more than apparent to me that my voice was not one that was needed. At the very least, not without being inquired upon. Again, for some things- no, for all things, it was best to listen upon primary action. And though I be provoked to wring some words from my own head, that does not warrant my opinion for all matters.

I hope you’ve been well, by the way. I know, these self-indulgent tangents are so often one way. Nature of the beast, I suppose. But I am firmly in the camp of working towards the alleviation of human suffering (whether ultimately possible or not). And that does include you, so you know.

Over the last few days, weeks, and so on, up to the start of this, what seems to be a historic year, I have been reinvigorating my abilities as a student of history. For as long as I can recall, regarding my childhood and adolescent education, the study of the past accomplishments and failures of this species was a subject where to excel seemed a natural fit. And after, what ended up being years, I now aim to reinvigorate that ability. For despite there being likely not a single direct answer to any of the world’s woes in the tales of the past- there are tremendous examples where comparable situations either succeeded or failed based upon the actions of those deemed by the records to be prominent in those now gone moments.

Buy what worked for them, won’t work for us. Not in an exact way. As they likely wouldn’t have much of a clue what to do with we have now. And if they did have an answer, it was likely exponentially short sighted. If they were capable of more foresight, maybe we’d have less on our plate right now. Not to be one playing the blame game, but so many of our issues stem from shit that folks fucked up prior to the point we find ourselves at. Some of it ignored or pushed aside. Some not dealt with out of laziness or exhaustion or an inability to comprehend the gravity of some particular instant. If they knew, I’m sure a good many of them would feel sorry. The decent folks, at least.

As I’m sure I will have apologies to ask of my daughter’s generation, and any others who might experience my work beyond my own physical demise and alteration towards decomposition. At this rate, the legacy of my written word may at best make it to the end of the week. Fickle times, these can easily be. Not to say any of this crap is worth anything beyond the moments in which I decided to write it.

And along with a conscious regard towards understand the world’s past (in varying perspective, size and scope-wise), I think of my own past. And the crystalized failures and shames, and though none are truly catastrophic or evil, they are there. My mistakes. Along with what I can recall as anything like a triumph. And the pattern seeking tendency of the human mind allows (or forces) the categorization of the life that once was my present.

Like how just a decade ago, I may have been at the height of my youthful optimism. All the world ahead of me and just enough scrapes to think myself keen enough to navigate beyond anything that might stand in the way. Chasing a love I believed destiny and ambitions I believe prophecy. None of which came to be. And for many of those things, I find myself a better man being denied them. Hell, maybe for all of them. Maybe that guy the optimist dreamed up was nothing but a self-centered prick.

Not to deny the selfishness I find myself regularly fighting against, but maybe that guy who had everything work out for him, never once would think himself in any critical reflective light. And were that the case, the man I am today would be ashamed to be him.

And still, for some of those hopes from the past, a change or two to make them a realization might have brought about some other, even more enlightened and less jaded being. But any which way you slice the former contemplated trajectories, what was to be now is the what was.

And here he sits. Still marching back to a keyboard. Some times, maybe even most, with little more than a little churned up gusto and a vague believe that the right kinds of inspiration can bring about real kinds of good in the three-dimensional the human spirit is (for now, for forever) confined to.

I’ll keep reading. I’ll keep listening. Because it feeds my soul. And, I know it has fed and might feed others. And because I need to write. And if that addiction need be fed, it best be fed by something worthwhile.

Which as far as addictions go, it is not the worst.