Meanderings of the mind.

It's Wednesday, and I have nothing to write about.  I have to write today because I didn't write on Saturday, and if I let myself slack until next Saturday, well, I know it just won't happen at all.  But while I've been musing on any number of things lately, none of them seem worthy of a whole blog post.  I wish the sports commentators would just let Tim Tebow play football, and Kardashian headlines are beginning to disgust me.  I have promised myself that I'm not going to look at anything regarding the presidential election before January 2nd, and life is just life as usual. 

Isn't it funny how life as usual can seem like a bad thing?  Somewhere in one of my notebooks I have a collection of lines that I'd like to build a novel around, and one of them is, "Everyone wants to live on the edge of the epic.  No one realizes that epics only happen when the world has been turned upside down."  I meant it as a corollary to Gandalf's "So do all who live to see such times."  People living in peaceable places want excitement and heroism.  We want to be part of something exciting and gripping.  People who are heroes, if they have any sympathy with their fellow man, wish that their actions hadn't been necessary.  After all, in order to save someone from a burning building, the building has to be on fire. 

I don't go around looking for burning buildings, and I pray fervently that I will never have to make the decisions that characterize the epic or tragic hero.  But I, and I think a great many Americans and probably Europeans too, feel separated from the great struggle that we know is part of life.  The popularity of RPG video games and fantasy novels.  We want a struggle.  We want a challenge, and we don't want it to involve paying bills or being nice to that person in the next cubicle or making sure the toddler brushes her teeth.  I think we want to feel that we're having an impact in a style of life that seems casual or even isolated, and the daily routine of keeping our heads above water doesn't satisfy that feeling. 

It's silly really.  We only need to look at our current economic state to see that when one man can't meet his daily obligations anymore,  it pulls the guy who's next to him and who depends on him down too.  One man can't pay his rent.  Without the rent money, the landlord can no longer pay his mortgage and send his son to college at the same time.  Etc, etc, etc.  If my house isn't clean, I'll get ants, and the landlord will have to spray.  If the laundry isn't done, then the Boo has to wear pullups.  Trees get cut down to make the paper.  My carbon footprint increases.  Our little decisions to be responsible do make a difference. 

And even we, in middle class suburban America, are in the heart of epic conflicts that are hard to see but are no less real.  The battle against death and his cohorts disdain and despair is multi-faceted and never ceasing.  It engulfs the poor and the homeless, the unborn, the lonely, the elderly, the environment, and the ill.  Just because we aren't facing dragons or invading hordes doesn't mean that we can't shape the world.  We just have to be willing to invest persistently and keep our hobbit sense handy.  After all, the struggle is a lot more epic when we remember how small we are and that we have to be faithful with a little before we can be trusted with a lot.