Trivial Pursuit

When you see dying all around you, of dear ones, you think differently about life and what it really is. The situations we hear and see in the media are what feels just another reality TV drama on screen. There is good and bad, tragedy and success, hope and hopelessness, and we are helpless to do anything much about it other than gasp and groan or cheer as we watch. These times, with hoards of people fleeing their birth countries and natural disasters tossing them about like flotsam and jetsam, we become oddly immune to true feelings. We aren't there. We watch. But our curiosities make us ask, what does it feel like to be one of our fellow earth dwellers of every colour and kind, struggling within inches of our lives trying to survive all of the bad forces. In our comfortable part of the world, we see  attractive, nicely cared -for folk vying on political stages, orating while we, the listening, hope for them to give us answers to personal, community and world problems. There is no quick and easy solution and there never has been. All we can do is what is right for us in our small, surrounding worlds, and hope that it filters down to something more meaningful eventually to others. That's about it - trivia. It's our minuscule addition to the vast trivia that makes up the larger bundles of it rolling along like a snowball getting larger and larger, every day, as we populate the planet. It's not hopeless. And we are the tiny bits, the trivia, that can, in our humble way, make it tolerable if not perhaps, better. We can live responsibly without becoming fanatics. We can deal with what is right around us. Maybe it's trivia, but we go after it anyway. We make our footprints smaller, we give what we can, we are kind and sharing with one another, we are understanding of those both better and worse off than we are, we give love to our close ones and protect the young. We try to be good and helpful neighbours, we strive to be creative and learning and productive. We simply care and are aware that we are just another bit of trivia but, we say, that's what all the bigger events are made of - us. It is a large and friendly planet and we crawl about it, hoping to live long and useful lives, to find love and a life free of hurts and open our hearts to those less fortunate no matter what our station in life. It's our trivial pursuit.