"There but for the Grace of God, Go I"

Just a quick FYI, that I found utterly fascinating.

You know how, in Vampire mythology, exposure to direct sunlight kills them. It bakes them completely. I had watched "Legend" a year or so ago (the Will Smith remake of 'The Omega Man', which was not terribly good, but at least interesting) and in it, Mr. Smith, as one of the last "normal" people alive was capturing and studying these new "vampires", who of course, had this condition. He would experiment on them, then expose them to UV light to see what happened. He had a wall of about 50 who he'd accidentally killed because his experiments failed, and they roasted under the "light of the sun".

I always took this part of Vampire mythology to be acceptable as a standard "suspension-of-disbelief" to enjoy the stories.

Turns out...it is entirely real. A massively small amount of the population, in fact, is born with some kind of defect that does NOT protect the skin/blood/system from the radiation of the sun, and this small population...a very real group of people living today...would experience 3rd degree burns (i.e., all the way to the bone) if exposed to direct sunlight. These people cannot go outside, at all, until after dusk, or they would die.

And so, the "There but for the grace of God go I" is this: I am composed of all the same atoms and molecules that these people are. I, and the rest of us, not only resemble them, we but differ in a minuscule sub-micropscopic fragment of DNA. And I walk freely under the sun, and the worst I get (and yes, I am fair skinned, and did one single time, get a 1st degree burn [skin only] from hours and hours under that gigantic fusion-reaction-lamp that is called "Sol") is a "sun-burn".

"But for the grace of God" (or whatever you deem that to mean; natural selection, Tao, The One, The Many...don't care...WHATEVER "it" IS) you and I, who are not among them, walk in the face of BRUTAL radiation which can and should roast us to our bones, and we are unaffected. We just 'are'. And the fireflame of waves upon waves of body-roasting radiation...ehhh....they bother us not.

I find that fascinating.

And yes, I know, it does open up probably some other gigantic can-o-worms of all the OTHER things that should kill us all immediately and without comment, and don't. And perhaps, one by one I will look at them, to try to understand; why? It is the goodest and bestest of "why". But I would love to know...why.

I guess...wouldn't we all?

The World Financial Crisis: This too shall pass.

"May you live in Interesting Times". That is an ancient Chinese curse, and, perhaps it is, and we most certainly do.

There is no doubt but that the world financial crisis is right now a "Once in a Century" event. Something like this happened just once between 1900 and 2000. Let us hope this one happens also, just once, during 2000-2100.

But if I could turn this around for all of us for a moment: If you are currently employed and have a home which is not in foreclosure and you can feed yourself and your family, whomever among you that description fits, please count yourselves as utterly blessed on this day, and over this Holiday. If you are among those whose livelihoods and lives have been harmed or challenged by these current circumstances, please take heart and remember that all things in time pass, and this too shall pass and become better. You need to hang on and remember that.

And to every one of you, and every one in a similar position, I am hoping for you and praying for you. I know you all are always used to me acting as a cheerleader and an indefatigable optimist always arguing for the logical best result. I want you to understand: I still am. I still have the same hope and I mean for everything. This economy WILL improve. The cascading failures will soon reach their retaining walls of market-correction and government-imposed resurrection, and after a few months of crashing against those retaining walls, the other optimists out there like me will start cautiously buying again, cautiously lending again, cautiously simply PARTICIPATING again because of one simple fact. All of us hate this climate of doom. None of us want it. And everyone wants it to be hopeful again. Human beings exist on hope. "Hope springs eternal in the human breast". It isn't just a fact that is embedded into us, it is genetic and spiritual cause that we all share. And right now, if the overall human gestalt can simply be given enough room, enough reason, to think that things will get better...things will get better. We will all start to cause it to become better.

We will affect everything with our thoughts of hope and our dreams of better times, every single piece of hope fluttering, Chinese-butterfly-like, on the entire quantum universe, and AS WE WILL IT, AS WE WISH IT, it WILL GET BETTER. And soon. We all want it so much, that want will transform the world into our wish. But for now, we must wait for the retaining walls to convince our gestalt that the downward spiral has been contained.

I think that our gestalt will be convinced sooner rather than later....