Complacency

“Is life so dear, or peace so sweet, as to be purchased at the price of chains or slavery?”  (Patrick Henry) I have never heard of anyone avoiding a whirlpool in a river by going with the flow.  In every case resistance has been needed – a decision that that is not the fate I want for myself and doing something about it.
I reckon I know a few dirty words.  I’ll say one now.  Complacency.  There I said it.  Your Dictionary (I don’t know why it is called your dictionary when it is my dictionary) defines complacency as “a feeling of contentment or self-satisfaction, often combined with a lack of awareness of pending trouble or controversy.”
It is funny (funny strange, not funny joke), I feel this is particularly a first world problem.  It seems the more we have, the more complacent we are.  I am thinking it is hard to be complacent when you don’t know where your next meal is coming from.  I have a roof over my head.  When I want food it is just a trip to the supermarket or eating out.  We have two cars.  Travel by plane has never been easier.
Personally, I think this is why terrorism is such a threat.  It is so random.  Nothing shakes my complacency like a random act of violence.  All might be good with the world and in a moment things change.
It is weird but from what I hear never has a generation had so much but been so unhappy.  Suicide rates bare testimony to that as does drug taking.  Binge drinking is endemic.  Many have never had it so good, but will do anything to be somewhere else.
It seems different religious experiences are on the rise.  I knew someone who knocked on a door to be told by the person that greeted them that they had said, “God the next person who knocks on my door, I will follow what they espouse.”  It really does seem like the imagery of everyone having a hole in the heart to be filled, is true.
I see the second part of the definition as both applicable once, and applicable now.  “…often combined with a lack of awareness of pending trouble…”  It has been a while, but I hear thunderstorms coming over the mountains.  Generally then I go to the BOM and see what is coming.  I found the movie “War of the Worlds” really hard to take.  The hero of that movie knew he faced a problem after he told his daughter, “lightning never strikes in the same place twice” and it did.  Knowing a storm is coming helps me to be prepared.
I’ll never forget the advice I received decades ago “it is not how close to danger you can go but how far you can keep from it.”  I cannot help thinking many are playing with fire these days and don’t even know they are.  I have spoken to a number of people that had gotten involved in things, and apart from intervention could not extricate themselves.
I think the women that gave me stamps was on the money when she said, “hold them loosely.”  It seems to me all this could be gone in an instant.  I will continue to live like it won’t, but I will never deny the possibility that it could.