I was flipping through the Sunday morning news shows today…Chris Matthews, This Week, and Face the Nation…and found it rather incredible that all those educated panelists are so out of touch with what is really happening in this country. It’s as if they are incapable of changing the context in which they evaluate the state of things. 

Maybe its just me but I don’t think so.

From where I stand, and consequently how I see things, most people have reached a saturation point in their lives concerning materialism, self-gratification and, yes, even technology.  Its been a nice ride but when all is said and done we came up empty.  Empty and yearning for something more.  Something that can’t be bought or even held onto..unless its what we give away. 

You see, that’s the paradox.

Our national search for “more”…be it whatever “more” we wanted…turned out to be a quest for fool’s gold.  Or false idols, depending on your belief system.  All the doing, getting and having solved nothing and, in fact, created more problems than we can apparently handle at the moment.  It’s a lot older that Ivan Beosky’s University of California Berkley speech in 1986 where he told the graduating class “Greed is healthy” …although I think his words were a seminal moment by the absence of public outrage that failed to follow his pronouncement.  Our silence spoke volumes about us and the future direction of our country.

Now, almost 25 years later, after proceeding down the path Boesky and we by our silence condoned, we have arrived at an unintended and undesirable destination. 

The People get it. But those who govern, and most of those reporting upon it, don’t.  They’re still talking about fixing the economy or closing the information leaks or creating jobs or lowering foreclosures and reinvigorating the housing market as those things that will return our lives to some recognizable scenario.

But its not about any of that. It’s about balance and unity.

It’s about lives that are balanced between what we take in and what we give out.  It’s about relationships that honor and respect differences.  It’s about bringing children into the world and then actually devoting the amount of time it takes to raise them with commendable values.  It’s about truth telling in our personal and professional lives.  It’s about compassion as the highest form of love.  It’s about pursuing technological development but not at the expense, or disregard, of ethical and spiritual development.  It’s about knowing how connected we are to everything on Earth and beyond… so that we think and act with the realization that our every thought and our every action matters. 

So, to the people who govern and those who report upon it all: You can try and resurrect the past, or project how well your opinions and ideas will shape the future.  But in the only analysis that matters, there is only the moment in which you are living.  If you refuse to see and sense it for what it actually is you are living in an illusion and, therefore, part of the problem… not the solution.

Which is why I don’t often watch Sunday morning news show.

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