This moment. Right now! What have we gotten ourselves into?

If you thought common sense ruled our domain, think again. What domain? It’s a TV sitcom gone rogue. Blame the president, blame congressional leaders. Blame Communists, blame right-wing Republicans, blame terrorists, blame parents, blame your neighbors, blame Fox News, blame White House sycophants …

But, then there’s the spouses, operating under duress and often economic hardship, the schools that seem stuck on a system that forgot about the steps it takes to research and understand our world as history. There’s also the world, a globe surrounded by take-what-you-can-get, conquer and claim, populations beaten with bullets and bats, waiting for someone to speak up loudly enough for them. Did you hear what that person said? Where is the end of it all, where is the hammer of justice, who will speak up for us?

If I go online, there’s a plethora of voices, the din of opinions. I search for common sense, solutions to everyday problems, and to find commonality — a right wing/left wing, right-field/left-field cul-de-sac, people with nowhere to go. The second baseman shouting for them to throw the ball. Those second-class citizens in the bleachers stuck with hot dogs.

I don’t get it. Our world, part of an infinite universe with everything we needed to learn, and we still face the challenges of nature and our own indolence. We were given power to get into our own trial and errors and to understand the damage from the manmade ones. Nature’s playing field is what it is. Cursing the gods never got us anywhere.

Really listening to each other brought illumination. Accepting circumstances produced humility before the gods. They never seem to stop haunting us. We were its playthings. But being pissed at the gods never worked, just like being pissed at each other was always the zero-sum hard way out. Never knowing our neighbors isn’t going to teach us acceptance. If societies don’t make the game any easier, then it’s up to us  —  each individual  —  to redraw the playing field so someone can win, anyone, everyone, because we can rely on the fact that the goalposts haven’t up and skedaddled. Oh, the excuses were given.

We know how to make the game fair. And most of us love sports because it’s a chance to test our ability to accept defeat as well as celebrate victory. The game is never over. We’ll be playing it long after we’ve all transcended this dimension. But spirit is an unequivocal realm. We get a long time to reflect on lifetimes and the beautiful things we accomplished, the challenges overcome, the joy we brought to others and ourselves. The rest fades away because we really didn’t need it here, and we certainly won’t need it there. But situations make us learn. What’s good for us is often opaque, and grudges always just close the book.

This leads me to the inane and insane circumstances we’re stuck with. But first, let’s acknowledge the fact that 90% of the people might just have their heads on their shoulders, for the most part, including all those without education, affected by physician/mental issues, the homeless, the out of work, the abandoned, the poor, the forlorn, and the obsessive, the forsaken. There’s more of you out there, I’m sure. Place those souls next to the 10%.

I forgot to mention all those suffering from wars that were started over ego and self-aggrandizement, nationalism, and self-righteousness. The picture is getting too bleak, I fear. Canada and the U.S. talks fall apart. How ridiculously stupid. Stalemate in the Iran/U.S. Hormuz fiasco, David and Goliath endlessly launching salvos in Ukraine, with David launching drone-like stones, and the seething avalanche of nature slowly building its counterforce to the absolute blind carelessness of a species that, instead of understanding the balance of nature, makes war endlessly against it.

I apologize for the bleakness, but I resurrect my optimism in knowing how amazing and beautiful earthlings can be  —  how creative, how appreciative, how inciteful, how sharing, how inventive, how responsive, how thrilling, how seeking, how reaching, how amazing in the moments when the best of human nature leads to the fore, the day-to-day qualities of life that sustain us, love our neighbors, lend a hand, compliment, and inspire. We live better when we share and sustain a consciousness of the world around us and more than just those closest to us.

Epitomizing the buffoonery of the Trump administration’s renaming of Lake Ontario to Lake America, and by extension Trump’s war on Canada, U.S. Rep. Debbie Dingell, of Michigan, gets the last laugh, calling it Lake Natalie after his new sidekick, Natalie Harp. Melania is off to buy a new hat.

Alan Harris lives in Shelburne Falls.