January 2010 Editorial

This afternoon I was playing Super Mario Brothers on my Nintendo DS while a helicopter was hovering around my neighborhood. A voice came from the helicopter and said something about how we should be on the lookout for a male suspect who was attempting to escape an arrest. At first I was mostly taken aback by the fact that police helicopters have speakers loud enough so that I could hear what they were saying in my apartment over the sound of the propellers. Of course it also made me a bit uneasy that there was some suspected criminal using my neighborhood as his hide out, but really I was more interested in Mario.

Some time passed by and I wanted to go out to the store to get an energy drink and just to get out of the apartment. However when I thought about it I didn't really feel like going out while there were most likely a ton of cops out and about in my neighborhood. It may seem strange to some readers but the police actually intimidate me much more than most of the people they chase around. My dogs were barking at the helicopter and I calmed them down and then went back to playing Mario for no other reasons than the fact that I didn't want to go outside while the cops were there and I had already checked my email earlier in the day.

It was the first day of a new year and a new decade and I was in my living room playing video games. The night before had actually been even more boring. You can say whatever you will about how "only boring people get bored" and in this case you may be right, at least this week. My reaction to the whole incident with the police helicopter was pretty indicative of how I have looked at a lot of things for the past decade. Fucked up things have been going on all over the world and sometimes actually hitting quite close to home, but since I don't really know how to react to them I often just sort of ignore them. It's not that I'm apathetic or dispassionate- I have very strong opinions about most issues and can actually be a pretty emotional person. Still in the face of insanity or disaster I am often unnaturally unfazed. Once my jacket set fire while I was wearing it and my friend, Erock put it out because I was just standing there calmly, trying to remember how to execute the "stop, drop, and roll" technique of extinguishing a fire (a less abridged version of this story may come up in a future column).

Like I said the last decade has been full of all sorts of disasters, but for better or worse we have all survived them. This is the time of year where people reflect on all that they have done and come up with New Year's Resolutions. Whether it's losing weight, quitting smoking, working harder, or taking on some new hobby, people feel that with a new year coming that they should change their lives in a positive way. Of course there's nothing wrong with attempts at self improvement and self evaluation or even creating New Year's Resolutions, but it's also important to remember that we have all seen a lot of chaos and disaster in the past few years and somehow we are all still here- and to say even more, most of us aren't in a position where we are being chased by talking police helicopters. Humans are equipped for resilience and that is really probably what we should be most thankful for when we examine our lives and the past year and decade. Whether we deal with problems by staying inside and playing Mario or by doing something more constructive we have all managed to make it to 2010. Kudos!

Now let's raise our proverbial glasses to a better future and let's hope that we all have a blast for the next decade. The world is waiting outside and as long as there's not cops patrolling your neighborhood, every moment that we live is an opportunity to make life more meaningful and enjoyable.

 

-Ditch-
Asst. Editor