Madness

"When we remember we are all mad, the mysteries disappear and life stands explained." 
                                                                                        - Mark Twain, Notebook, 1898

It seems to me that we will do anything to avoid change.  We seem to have an innate desire for permanance.  We crave stability and try desperately to find it.  This explains so much.  It explains the insurance industry and a host of human schemes designed to avoid inevitables.  Governments try to hold back change.  Police and fire departments and the military desperately attempt to keep us safe.  To tell the truth, it's all madness.

In spite of our longings and desires we all know in lucid moments that nothing stays the same for very long.  We can predict change with absolute certainty.  It is as inevitable as the tide.  It will come tomorrow and every day after.  No matter how much we hope and wish, our world is changing.  Tomorrow's change is hurdling toward us at the speed of light.

On Friday I watched testimony in Washington, DC, about the United States budget mess.  Any sane person can predict that life in this big, amazing country is going to change.  Like a large family, our country cannot continue to live large and pay small.  If we are going to survive financially, we will have to discard some things we cherish.  It's time to make hard decisions, but we are completely mad.  Individual citizens are mad, Democats are mad, Republicans are mad, Congress is mad, and the whole country is Alice's Mad Hatter these days.

I have lived as a mad man myself.  In January 2001 my family owned a very dynamic business with offices in four cities.  We were working hard and expanding when change rocked our boat.  The dot.com bubble popped.  One stormy change after another hit us.  For a while we madly fought the inevitable.  We did everything to weather the storm, but in the end we had to make some horrendous decisions.  We had to shut down the business and choose survival.  This meant that if our boat was going to float, we had to lighten the load.  We had to throw some cherished treasures overboard.  We did, and we weathered the storm.  In the end it would have been madness to do anything else.

I hear a lot of mad talk these days.  Yesterday, I heard yelling and screaming about NPR defunding.  Last week, I heard angry words about government pension reform.   For a month I have been hearing furious rants over educational cuts this spring.  Any change to social security or medicare or entitlements is greeted with screams of "You can't change my life! Change somebody else's life, not mine!"  It's all madness. 

I don't know how to painlessly lighten our finacial boat, but it will happen.  We can choose to act, or we can madly wish and hope.   Either way, the storm is coming.  If madness keeps us from acting, we will lose everything.  If we act, we just might be able to keep the boat afloat.  It's the sane thing to do, but unfortunately, I have little faith in sanity these days.