Despair can and will kill you

We go to sleep each night not knowing if we will wake up in the morning. How many of us ponder that thought? Nothing is certain. Few things are predictable. We take it on faith that when we get behind the wheel of our vehicles, we will not only get to our destination safely, but that we will make it back home in one piece.

Last year, I lived alone for most of the year. It was the first time I had lived by myself in a couple decades. I thought to myself on occasion, "What if I slip in the shower and hit my head and bleed out?" "What if I start choking on my food and I can’t get my airway clear on my own?" We, as a people, operate on the faith that the next moment is going to be there by default.

Now imagine allowing these precious moments to be consumed by the realization that the world that many of us were born into is now a world where kindergarteners are being indoctrinated with the teaching of homosexual sex by gay, male teachers. Or a world in which "racism" is promoted as more of a "threat to democracy" than 10,000 Haitian males between the ages of 18 and 30 pouring over the US borders illegally in one afternoon. I believe demoralization is a big part of having these and so many other horrific stories shoved in our faces every day. The elite want you focused on every negative event that they’re orchestrating. They know that for those of us who care, we are prone to allowing their social engineering to distract us from what we should be building and what we need to concentrate on.

I’m not telling you to stick your head in the sand and ignore what is happening. Take it from someone who is forced to read about all the horrors we’re experiencing as a part of his work: if you allow yourself to be consumed by dread, the enemy has won. Pay attention to what issues affect you the most and work to do whatever you must to mitigate the damage coming in your direction. But you MUST also live! You can’t give up. Hopelessness leads to death.

I rarely talk about my family, but my maternal grandfather was a beast of a man. He was tall and lanky. In the old days, he would participate in bare-knuckle boxing matches for money. He frequently ventured out into New York City's streets looking for fights. He was from western Pennsylvania, of Polish stock, and there was little refined about him. When he was 67 years old, he would still hit the streets every day and "mean mug" someone just to get his blood flowing. As he was walking down the steps to the subway one day, he stumbled and tumbled down the concrete steps. He came home limping but said he was OK. It turns out the crazy SOB was hiding a slight compound fracture of his left tibia and didn’t want to go to the hospital. He was able to hide this for a few weeks. You may have guessed that by that time gangrene had manifested. My grandmother forced him to the hospital, where the doctors told him they had to take his leg at the knee. They set the date for a week from his visit to do the amputation, but a few days before the surgery he curled up in bed and died. What did he die of? In my heart, I believe it was hopelessness. It was the knowledge that he wouldn’t be able to continue living the life he wanted.

My example is the worst one you could imagine, but studies have shown that our minds do affect our health. While we cannot allow ourselves to fall into despair, we do need to look at our current situation in the most realistic, bare-bones way possible. And that involves recognizing that all that can be expected of us is to weather this epoch day by day. In my opinion, a big part of that is just living our lives. I’m going to continue to do the things that make me happy, while mitigating the damage as much as possible for things over which I have a chance of controlling. But know that some things, for the moment, are beyond our control.  Just don’t let them make you sick, or worse.