Painting With Light

“Overlooking Lake Huron”  by R.L. Herron

Had a bit of problem with my blog upload yesterday. Could not make it upload a new picture, no matter what I tried. Finally got it working again this evening.

However, now I’ve lost the thought that made me want to show this image of Lake Huron in the first place!

It seems to me it had something to do with the uncertainty of tomorrow, much like the uncertainty of what lies beyond the steps in the picture.

Oh, I know, and so do you, that there’s probably a beach at the end of those steps in front of the lake … but is there? Just like in life, one never really knows, until you’re willing to actually take those steps forward and bring the hidden things into view.

In the midst of the latest rounds of uncertainty, I know there’s been a lot in the recent news about air travel.

Sadly, all it takes is one nut job to put the media into a frenzy, and have most of the country quaking and worrying about their fellow travelers. Is that one safe? Is she OK? Does he look suspicious?

Media “experts” seem to appear in every news segment at times like this, each with a theory on what happened, or what will now almost certainly be the next thing to come. But, how do they know? How do you know?

Fact is, they can’t know. Life just isn’t like that.

I’ve decided to ignore the media blather, and focus on what I can see. Keep my eyes open and my temper contained as I take off my shoes, put all my hand lotion, shave cream, liquid medications and such into a clear plastic baggie, instead of the nice leather kit bag designed to neatly hold it all, and wait extended amounts of time for tedious searches.

What on earth is accomplished by all that? What good does it do to stop old, gray-haired ladies and search their belongings? I certainly don’t know.

Still, they have to do something, if only to give the illusion things are being done for our protection. I don’t like it but, like everyone else, I do it. It has to be done or, sadly, you don’t travel at all.

But part of me fears the encroachment upon civil liberties that can happen by letting regulations take away more and more of our privacy. We seem to do that freely, in the name of safety. How do you know which is worse?

So, what do you do, when you can’t see what’s over the next hill, or beyond the next step? You keep moving forward, and hope for the best.

You really must think about what you may give up in new regulations before joining the crowd in clamoring for them. The fact that we can think about it and debate … that’s life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness, as guaranteed in our grand Constitution.

And I’m all for that!

This entry was posted on December 29, 2009 at 8:24 pm and is filed under Non-Fiction Writing, Politics, Storytelling. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.