My fellow Americans, at this point, all I can do is urge you to sweat.
That’s right, sweat.
It’s the greatest fertilizer in the history of the world, a surefire way to make anything grow – and something that is severely lacking right now in our country that would, more than likely, fix a lot of our issues.
And there are many issues, most all of which, start with us.
We’ve got it all wrong. We want to blame Washington for our problems. We want to blame politicians, presidents and the pundits who fan the flames in the media.
We should be blaming ourselves – or better yet, stop blaming – and start sweating again. We need to get to work on us, because we are morally, socially and physically broken.
And broken badly.
Don’t like Obamacare? Well, don’t blame Obama. Don’t like the Republicans who shut down the government? Well, don’t blame the Republicans. Because we shut down long before they did.
Think of why this debate exists in the first place? Because we have an inverted pyramid of a population, sucking the economy dry with the need for more doctors and drugs, which raises the costs of care. And we have begged for the politicians to fix it. So this is the solution they came up with. And now we’re angry?
You’d think 90 percent of our population is upset as much as we’ve heard about it this week. But not even – or barely even – 50 percent of eligible voters voted in the last election. Seems like we like to complain, whine and moan, but not actually, you know, get our hands dirty and do anything to change it.
We cannot sit back and just wait for others to fix problems we the people created.
Frankly speaking, we’re obese, we’re lazy and we are just waiting for others to do it for us. We ask for more from our government, it in turn gets bigger, thus taxes us more. Then, we get upset at those taxes, and the solutions offered, by the people we didn’t care enough to vote for – or against.
Yet I fear we are incapable or up to the task of changing it ourselves. Our efforts are lacking, our resolve is weak, our morals eroding.
More people cared about the finale of a show about a teacher-turned-amateur druggist than do the government shutdown or impending debt ceiling debate. Breaking Bad, no matter how well acted, directed and reviewed, represents a vast portion of what’s happening to us.
We used to watch finales involving friends (Friends, Seinfeld), people who frequented a bar (Cheers), or a middle-class family learning life together (pick one of many).
Now, our most popular shows are violent, obscene and worst of all, try to paint a face of empathy on the characters who are the worst. Mobsters (The Sopranos), murderers (Dexter), drug-makers (Breaking Bad) or drug-peddlers (The Wire). We’ve turned these characters into sympathetic figures and call it real TV progress because of all the nuance and character conflict.
The story of a teacher who had cancer, didn’t have insurance and turned to making meth is not just a television fantasy, it is a fantasy that consumed 10 million people last weekend into sitting on pins and needles to see how it would end. I’ve seen more media attention and stories about what it all meant, what was Walt’s legacy and the lasting effect of the show than I have just about anything else – including what’s going on in Congress.
And we wonder what’s wrong with us?
Our priorities are skewed, as we sit in our own bathwater and call others dirty and corrupt.
Have we learned nothing from history? We’re following every other great civilization in world history…right to the depths of demise. And none – not even Rome – were taken down from marching armies, but from within, by its own moral, social and economic declines.
Too bold? Too apocalyptic? I beg to differ.
To heal, to fix what ails us, we must first fix ourselves.
We too gladly hand off our liberties. We spend more than we make, then we want to blame someone else for our failure to plan. We don’t hold doors open. We don’t say thank you when someone does it for us.
We dress like slackers. We hold an aura of disdain and contempt in the general way in which we carry ourselves. We expect, but we don’t respect. We’re so engrossed with what is going on in our own little bubble, that we can see past our little walls.
The sooner we learn it’s not about us, the better off we become, the more we live our lives with a greater good in mind. We worry about our younger generations, but that focus should be on us. If we are better people, better parents, better spouses, we produce better children.
We prance around staring at our phones, but wonder why we’re losing contact and that feeling of closeness with family and friends. Because there is no connection. We impose our will on others, yet wonder why no one else is more understanding, forgiving or sincere.
And we’re easy targets for the current medium of the media. Information fed to us 24/7, over Twitter, scrolling footers on TV and with outrage and a false sense of urgency on everything has numbed us to anything. And when we are paying attention, misinformation is used as a scare tactic to paint a picture in a color by numbers sort of way.
We are what’s wrong with America. We don’t vote, but we complain about who we didn’t vote for. We are shocked by the violence in the world today – from mass shootings at schools and public places, to acts of terrorism. Yet in the next breath, we’re lauding the latest incomprehensibly violent movie or video game. We’d rather read 50 Shades of Gray, The Da Vinci Code and other fiction, then pretend it is real and that it somehow represents our struggles in life.
The variable in anything and everything is us. Always.
We lack any sense of discipline to change our course and our situation. We give in too easily. We medicate with drink, food, money and bright shiny objects, mostly because the very heart of our being is crying out from the inside and telling us how wrong it all is.
Something is working on us, something despicable, something dark, something sinister.
And every hour we stay late at work, every skipped family event, every day we say our little lies, gossip about friends, family and those we barely know or don’t even know, the deeper we let it work into our culture.
We are apathetic and it is becoming pathetic.
Lack of concern, lack of care, lack of passion and compassion. We have stopped caring enough to fight for or against anything that truly matters in the end. Instead, we get more worked up over the latest software updates than we do the pursuit of liberty and the laws surrounding it.
We have become lazy with our lives, our jobs, our friendships, our marriages, our parental duties. We don’t protect what we have, making it easier for it to be taken.
Think we’re fine? Fine. Keep waiting for something else to happen or someone else to fix it.
It’s called a decline for a reason. It’s slow and not obvious.
The opposite – literally in spelling – of “live” is “evil.” The less we live, truly and energetically live, the further we fall into the faceless, nameless evil that exists. If we’re not willing to protect ourselves, who will? We are the problem. We are badly broken, not just breaking bad.
But we can be the solution.
How do you avoid a complete moral bankruptcy and shutdown in our society? Go back to the roots. De-weed them, clean them off, make them whole, feed and water them with the right nourishment so that they will grow strong once more.
That nourishment is good, old-fashioned, sweat.
We must get to work on ourselves, sweating through the pain and growth of fixing us. From our bodies to our minds. Build things. Engage in our relationships. Cultivate our friendships. Plant positive thoughts and ideas in our children so that they may spread to the world. Pray more, text less. Stop letting others define us, instead refining ourselves into who you want to be.
Pick up the proverbial shovel and start digging, in the very same fashion we built this empire and became envy of the world.
If everything around us is falling apart, if we don’t like the current ways of the world, then our only real choice is to break away and invest in what we can control: ourselves.
And it starts with a little sweat.
We are the people. We are the beacon of freedom, of hope, of opportunity.
Time to start acting like it.
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