Lucky

Sometimes I just marvel at how well things have gone. It's so easy to slip into disgruntlement, and so much harder to be optimistic and recognize how good things are. I have a wonderful wife (it still makes me giggle saying that word), I'm doing work I love, got good friends, great apartment, etc. This year, I had a movie and a book come out. Both separate dreams of mine, and both accomplished nearly simultaneously. And yet sometimes I can go into a funk. It's usually about things outside my control...the economy, crime, politics, disasters in other countries. I have this talent for knitting together several events into a tapestry of despair. It's amazing how quickly that kind of stuff can just unravel into dust on the air if you look at it hard enough.

I've been thinking a lot about a similar subject, having to do with our neighborhood. When we first moved into the Mission, there were a couple shootings 10 blocks away or so, and an article came out in the Chron about a gang war/killing spree in the area. We were terrified, of course, and spent the first several weeks tiptoeing around, worried at night, etc. Part of the problem was that we'd been living in a more residential neighborhood for a year and got a little softened up. But also, there was this cloud of fear we walked into. Well, as time went on, we noticed there weren't really any menacing folks around, people were walking freely, and we relaxed a bit. Now we're at the end of the year, and the Chron puts out a map of the homicides for the last two years in the city...There were exactly the same amount as 2007 overall, and basically the same amount in the Mission. Now, all murders are bad things, and the number is higher than anyone would want it to be, but nothing had actually changed. We had been whipped up into this "Mission is in a frenzy of blood" worry, and in fact it was just the same amount of dangerous as it has been.

I felt like such a tool. It reminded me of that segment in "Bowling for Columbine" about fear, and how useful it is to keep people divided and distracted. Caution and safety are a great plan, but being governed by fear is not. And I had gone for it hook line and sinker. Grr...I had even worked in journalism, I know full well that no editor is gonna go for a story titled "Mission goes three months without a single homicide." But still, I'm so gullible for drama.

I'm not advocating for being a pollyanna and just embracing every gangster you see and putting flowers in their hair, but there is a way to just stay focused on what you actually observe around you. For instance, apparently the economy is collapsing, but actually most of the people I know make enough to live on. Why is it embarrassing, why do I even have to explain that I'm not a pollyanna because I feel slightly optimistic? Or maybe a better way is to say that I'm not really optimistic, but I'm willing to wait and see what happens. I can see forces going toward the light and forces going toward the dark, and when I'm really honest with myself I don't really know which way things are going to turn. Just two years ago it looked like all was darkness, and then Obama won. But meanwhile the economy goes into a tailspin. Which is the real frame of mind? I don't know, but there's just as many reasons to choose either darkness or light. Choosing darkness sure seems safer though.