“I wanted to change the world. But I have found that the only thing one can be sure of changing is oneself.” — Aldous Huxley

Yeah that’s my main man Aldous talking and he’s got a point there. I think The Undisputed Truth – a Motown soul band from the ’70s – might have even put it better with their song You Make Your Own Heaven and Hell Right Here On Earth. And to a great extent they’re right. No one knows if this is the only chance at existence we have. Is there a Heaven? I’d like to believe so. Is there a Hell? I sure hope not. Perhaps it is just as likely I’m to come back as lilac bush, a hairy tarantula, or a Samoan warrior sex goddess hell-bent on working my way through that army’s 74th regiment from Able to Zed.

I know you’re asking by this time what the point of this post is. Truth be told, I’m sitting on the back patio on Friday afternoon after a long, hard week, both work and non-work wise. I’ve got George Harrison on the speakers and he’s singing about loneliness and facing up to one’s own shortcomings. A chilled Hemingway daiquiri sits on the Margaritaville “Boat Drinks” table, and the water fountain is splattering away happily as another 70-degree Arizona afternoon works its way towards dusk. A bird is chattering away in that damned tree on the other side of the wall which also serves as a ground zero leaf source for my swimming pool, and that damned pool vacuum just won’t stop getting stuck against the bottom stairs.

In short, life is good. Very good.

Which is why I read stories like this and wonder why liberal activists spend their lives so pissed off about everything. Why does everything have to be a moral outrage? Why does every friggin’ thing need a cause and their irreplaceable involvement? And who the hell are they to decide what is morally right or wrong to begin with? If you look at this Boston Herald link about those moron (to be kind) protestors who made literally thousands of folks inconvenienced and beyond annoyed by closing a major interstate outside of Boston on Thursday you’ll see most of them come from rather affluent towns: Arlington, Brookline, Cambridge, Allston – these are not young people who have grown up deprived of anything. Rather, like I said in yesterday’s post, they probably grew up coddled and sheltered, wanting for nothing, their heads now filled with concepts of injustice and white privilege they can only learn from books, pamphlets, and radical leftist college professors. Black lives matter? These lame-brains haven’t a clue as to what it would be like to grow up in Eric Garner‘s neighborhood. Oh, they might if that was the only place where they could get their morning Starbucks’ latte grande. And hopefully to use the free WiFi so they can social box all their like-minded liberal activist friends.

Maybe I’m cut from a different cloth. Maybe I view my own brand of activism as celebrating a sunny afternoon, or feeling a breeze on my face, or hearing the rustling of palm tree branches, or savoring the taste of a pinot grigio after a hard day at work, or getting myself in shape at the gym, or listening to my music collections, or experiencing the simple joy of banging golf balls on a sun-splashed driving range. And maybe it’s selfish of me that I don’t feel any desire to inconvenience thousands of people on the way to work to protest the death of a petty convenience store thief who assaulted a police officer. I know the police aren’t perfect, and I’m willing to concede that there are white police officers who have abused their power at the expense of young black men on occasion, but I don’t need a bunch of spoiled suburban white brats to tell me how their idea of life in the inner-city works.

Don’t these people have a life? It must be pretty freakin’ miserable spending your life focused on other peoples misery. Anyone who thinks they can change the world by chaining themselves to concrete-filled barrels in the middle of a busy interstate needs to get their heads examined – that is, after they have an opportunity to cool their heels in jail for a night or two without Starbucks or their iPhone or iPad. I joke about it, of course, but can you imagine how empty these people’s lives are? What are their value systems? What makes them tick?

To me it’s all pretty sad. Sure the world is full of sadness, death, destruction, misery, and injustice. But God’s creation coexists with its own state of beauty. And we’re given friends and family to bring us joy. And a positive outlook can’t hurt, either: a smile or a random act of kindness to a stranger can be just as much of a change agent as shutting down an interstate.

These people not only need to get a life, they really need to lighten up. Life is way too short.