Planting a Seed for 2015

[WilliamPitt]

(Image via Shutterstock)

Planting a Seed for 2015
By William Rivers Pitt
Truthout | Op-Ed

Thursday 01 January 2015

If there were such a thing as a Hall Of Fame Of Suck, the year 2014 would not only win first-ballot admission, it would have its very own wing.

Consider this abridged butcher's bill:

In January, a teenaged gunman named Darion Aguilar opened fire in a Maryland mall, killing two before killing himself. In West Virginia, a storage tank containing a toxic chemical ruptured, pouring massive quantities of poison into the Elk River, which is part of the Mississippi River watershed. Some 300,000 residents were left without clean drinking water for weeks, and the ecosystem of the river was obliterated.

In February, the Ebola outbreak began in Africa, eventually killing more than 7,000 people and infecting more than 20,000 others.

In March, Malaysia Airlines flight 370 disappeared over the Gulf of Thailand with 239 souls on board. It was never found, and the US "news" media had a ghoulish field day for weeks on end. A building exploded in New York City, killing eight. At the South by Southwest music festival in Austin, a drunk driver bulldozed into a crowd, killing two and injuring more than 20. An oil barge in Galveston Bay collided with another ship and spilled a fair budget of the million gallons of crude oil it was carrying. Protests erupted in Albuquerque after video showing police killing a homeless man surfaced.

(snip through many months)

In December, the Senate finally released its torture report, which contained detailed horrors that beggar description, opening yet another round of flaccid discussion on why the perpetrators have never once seen the inside of a courtroom. Bradley Stone killed six people in Pennsylvania before killing himself. Another grand jury refused to indict NYPD officers Daniel Pantaleo and Justin Damico in the clearly-videotaped strangulation death of Eric Garner, and the national rage over police brutality and racism grew by orders of magnitude. Not long after, Ismaaiyl Brinsley shot and killed two NYPD officers before killing himself. In a despicable act of self-importance, police officers turned their backs on the Mayor of New York during one of the services for the fallen officers, thus joining the Westboro Baptist Church in becoming the only other group in the US with the gall to hold a political protest at a funeral.

Philip Seymour Hoffman, Robin Williams, Shirley Temple, Sid Caesar, Harold Ramis, Mickey Rooney, Rubin "Hurricane" Carter, Maya Angelou, Casey Kasem, Tony Gwynn, Horace Silver, Bobby Womack, Paul Mazursky, James Garner, James Brady, Lauren Bacall, Jackie Cain, Ben Bradlee, Tom Menino and Joe Cocker all died.

And one of my best friends, Brian, also died out of absolutely nowhere in November. He was the soul and spirit of our group of friends, three times my roommate since 1994, and his absence from my life, from this world, is an open wound I doubt will ever fully heal.

Strangely enough, when I think about every terrible thing that scarred this long year, I also think of Brian, but not in the way you might assume. See, I do not believe in death. Brian the man is gone from us, but knowing him made me a better person. He planted a seed within me, and by being the better person he helped to make me, I plant that seed in others: my friends, my family, and especially my little daughter. In this way, Brian and every other person who planted seeds go on, and on, and on, spreading from person to person, from relationship to relationship, and those seeds reap a mighty harvest that makes the world entire a little bit of a better place.

In this way, my friend Brian, along with everyone else who has been lost to us, are eternal. I find that to be a tremendous comfort.

This is the time for New Year's resolutions, and I have a request of you: plant that seed wherever you find fertile soil. Be that better person. Help to gentle the cold brutality of this hard world within reach of your arm. Let us not do 2014 ever again. It is in the rear-view mirror now, finally. Let's try to keep it there.

Happy New Year.

The rest: http://www.truth-out.org/opinion/item/28303-planting-a-seed-for-2015

[marym625]

1. Good article

You should repost. I don't think enough people saw it.