When I get really, really tired, I hallucinate. I don't mean the can't-stay-awake-during-a-movie tired, that sort of garden variety fatigue that is so common anymore amongst the general populace. I mean exhausted tired. The kind of tired where you fall asleep while stopped at a red light (have done it); where you almost literally are asleep while walking (also have done it); and, in my best personal example, where you drive off the road into a ditch at about 35 or 40 mph on a country road. I don't recommend any of these examples to anyone, but the upside to the last one? You wake up really, really quickly.
The hallucinations come in the form of thin, whispy, people-shaped blurs that dart from side to side (usually left to right, but not exclusively so) across my field of vision, causing me to jolt for a second until I realize what's happening. They're like little friends of mine who come to visit but outstay their welcome; teasing temporary lasers who draw their strength from my lack of it; and fleeting foot soldiers who draw up their own marching orders at my psychological expense. I've come to learn that "seeing things" is a common side effect of fatigue so I don't think much about it now. But when it first happened? Freaked me out.
The human body has limits, and when it is stretched past those limits bad things predictably happen. It goes without saying that President Obama is perpetually exhausted - part of the job description - but have you seen John Boehner lately? The guy is spent. Even Nancy Pelosi - awash in the perpetual creepy alertness that is her trademark - never had the obvious problem that Speaker Boehner has. People right now are making decisions about our future - important ones - while running on personal tanks that are 1/8th full.
The result of this is that decisions will be made and compromises agreed upon that will be as much about setting policy as it will be about simply doing something - anything - to end the marathon and enabling people to jump off the spinning wheel and get some rest. It's an awful way to govern.
The drooling Conservative in me rebels when I say this, but I propose that we construct a new government agency to deal with politician fatigue. The Organization Against Deathwalking In Excess (TOADIE) would watch over our elected officials, making sure that each and every one got proper rest so as to do their jobs, earn their pay, and prevent them from selling us collectively down the proverbial river. Cots could be spread out on the floor of the House - blankets for the back benchers - for designated nap time with the whole thing being telecast on CSPAN along with that dignified classical music background that they play during votes. Vegas could get involved by taking bets on who would wake up first (The early line: 8/5 on the GOP) with part of the ensuing largesse going to help pay off the national debt. Ad space could be sold on the cots and blankets. It has potential.
Exhaustion and fatigue affects us all. We don't react as well when it overtakes us and our instincts are dulled; it causes us to make hasty and wrong decisions; it forces us to forego long-term thinking in years for the short term goal of "Where can I sit down?" For all of our technological advances, being tired brings us back forthwith to the level of our cavemen ancestors: We must sleep. And nothing is right and nothing can be properly decided until we do so.
Am I the only one who thinks everything is so....average?
We've ceded space exploration to the Chinese. We worship pop stars who possess marginal talent. What's left of our auto industry - once the envy of the world - turns out product that consumers are leery of. People with paper-thin resumes reach pinnacles of power. I mean, really: Nancy Pelosi was once third in line to the presidency.
I rest my case.
Oh, we have devices up the yimmer that can tell us where we are, where we need to go, how much it will cost when we get there, and who will be waiting for us, but is that progress? Or is this just a shiny technologially-dipped veneer that is pulled down all around us like a microchipped opiate for the masses, calming, soothing, and entertaining us while we all kill off time until we pass on? Where are the great challenges for our society? Where are the committed goals?
I'd submit that the greatest challenge and goal facing us and our leaders in Washington these days is getting out of debt. It's a noble quest, but not exactly JFK committing us "before the decade is out" to going to the moon. Setting a national goal - if they're serious about it and I'm not so sure they are - of erasing the national debt is a little like falling asleep, letting the pigs run out of the pen, organizing a search party to find them and then then taking credit for rounding them back up. All it is is just getting credit for a lot of after-the-fact ambition.
Maybe we've become so self-centered as a society that large goals to be met as a collective group are almost instinctively rejected. If it can't be done quickly, conveniently, and, more importantly, as an individual, it's not to be embraced. The flag waver in me thinks that we could meet a great challenge, such as another major war in which shared sacrifice was a necessity and not just given lip service as it is now with the ongoing war in Afghanistan and the recently completed one in Iraq. We "hire" out our fighting forces and the financial costs of war(s) is largely paid for someplace down the road with the vast majority of the people feeling no sacrifice. Everything has been made too easy for us, and we've become soft. And because of that I'm not sure we're capable anymore of anything great. I hope I'm wrong.
So where are we to find the great challenges of the future? Where can we go to shed our average nature? A trip to Mars? We're broke, and besides the great space race of the 60's was fueled in great part by trying to beat the Soviets there; now, there is no such rival to spur us on and without it, I think you'd have a hard time rallying the populace behind such a quest. Ending world hunger? Too pie in the sky, and besides a great portion of that problem lies with the starving citizens' own governments and not as to the availability of food. World peace? Another big sky pie, and I'm convinced that it will never happen without some sort of Divine Intervention. It's not in man's nature to make permanent peace with itself.
So are we destined to just sink deeper and deeper into a morass of so-so? As our lives become personally easier, do we have the desire to sacrifice even a part of that for a collective accomplishment? Have we become too selfish? Do our leaders recongize this and are electorally reluctant to rock the Boat of Comfort?
We're flailing as a country. We wander from day to day much as our cavemen ancestors did, killing enough Mastadon and gathering enough stream water to survive yet another day, but without any real plan to get to a point where another mandatory daily kill is not vital to our continued survival. Maybe it has always been like that; I don't know. But as a human race, I sense there is more out there for us if we look for it. Another reason, another purpose, another big mountain to climb.
And we will be average no more.
