A Philosophical Post on Sad Things

    It's a new year and hopefully a good (or better one) for each and every one of us.  Mine will be full of changes and so will yours, no doubt.  Buddhism reminds us that "nothing is eternally permanent and everlasting."  

   Are you feeling positive about what lies ahead?  I'm trying to be, but some things have made me sad recently.  They're not related and some aren't important enough to even be considered "sad."  Actually, "irritating" is more like it.  On the other hand, one was utterly tragic. 

    First, the irritating. I'll admit that I'm somewhat naive and trusting when it comes to the Internet.  I'm no fool, mind you.  I've never tried to help people move millions of dollars in misplaced money by supplying my bank information.  But I've been basically trusting -- until now.  But recently this poor little inconsequential blog got hijacked by a bad person (or persons) or perhaps some kind of cyber-robot hacker thing. 

     After the hijacking, there were dozens -- no, hundreds of hits from someone or something in France.  No matter how badly I want to believe it, I know this blog doesn't have 491 followers in that country.  But  that's how many hits this blog got last month and the comments left on some posts were really nothing but badly-translated gibberish.  I had to take down that post, but now that they've given up on me, I'll repost it one of these days, perhaps even an improved version!  But now I see that some cyber-bot in Germany has taken over this poor little blog of mine. How sad and frustrating that is! 

     Another sad thing is a report in the news recently saying that the duly-elected US  Congress is disrespected, even despised by we Americans who, in theory, elected its members.  A survey of 830 Americans indicated that we actually like the following things better than our own Congress:  traffic jams, Donald Trump, lice, cockroaches, France, and used car dealers, to name but a few.  

    What a sad state of affairs that is!  And why is it, I wonder?  I don't know the answer to that, but I tend to agree with those who are disgusted with our legislators as a group, though not necessarily individually.  How can our elected officials be so polarized and divided that they're unable to even govern any more?  Maybe it's because we Americans ourselves have become so polarized that we can't agree on anything.  It's so distressing!

   But these things are trivial, even laughable, when you consider the real tragedies that happen in the world on a daily basis.  I've never experienced a full-scale disaster on the level of the mass killings that happen so often in America nowadays.  That's heart-break on a large-scale.  But just yesterday I saw a tragedy on the local level, or its aftermath, anyway.  It was a horrific traffic accident that happened just a block or so from our own dwelling.  

     At four in the morning a young couple in a new Porsche evidently skidded across the boulevard and crashed into a tree.  It was a horrific accident in which two young people died, or soon thereafter.  Just looking at the scene of the crash was painful and deeply distressing.  I can't imagine the emotional pain those families must be experiencing now, and the physical pain of the survivors until they finally succumbed to their injuries.

   I'll never be able to pass that particular spot in the road again without experiencing sadness and hoping that the friends and family members of these young people are somehow healing from this tragedy.

     I hope that 2013 will be a year in which some, hopefully many, of the other, more absurd sad aspects of life get resolved somehow.  And I'll try to console myself about things that make me sad, things I cannot change, with this fundamental concept from Buddhism:

   "The true nature of the universe is that its essence is forever changing, without stopping, without resting for (even) one moment."   According to the teachings, " . . . before he passed away, Buddha said (to one of his followers) . . . all that lives will eventually die.  Therefore, do not suffer because . . . . things do not last forever."  (Taken and adapted from Sayings of Buddha by Tsai Chih Chung.)