The truth would scare us.

I have been away for a month. Abroad. And I cannot say that I missed the USA. Albeit, it's nice to be back. I could live virtually anywhere and be happy. In a big city. Or on a desert island. In a democracy. Maybe even in a dictatorship. Yes, I'm adaptable. Flexible. But mostly, I like to be in love. That's the source of my happiness at the moment. Wasn't always that way. I only learned to like being in love in the past 40 or so years. Before that, it did not matter. Instead, I was just happy to be alive. Present in the world. But now I want to be in-love happy. I think I was born to be a lover. In addition to being a romantic idealist, a free-thinker in the spiritual and religious realm and a political liberal. I started defining myself about 10 or 12 years ago. When I retired. Because that gave me more freedom. More time. To pursue my inclinations. In a sense, I became less busy. Or so it seemed. Maybe because I began to pursue exactly what I wanted to pursue. Daily. All the time. I suppose that made me more active. More busy. But it didn't necessarily seem that way. I wanted to live. More fully. But at a leisurely pace. I have ended up writing far more than I wrote before I retired. But I write exclusively what I want to write. Like this piece. No editor dictates what I write. Whatever comes to mind goes on paper. I put no limits on myself. And I have begun to travel the world. Broaden my horizons. I once thought that if and when I lived to be an old man (in my 70s or 80s), it would be a scary experience. That I would be too conscious of the fact that I did not have much time left. But the older I get, the less I am concerned about age, about dying. Because I have finally learned to live one day at a time. Not to get too far ahead of myself. I am far more concerned about today than about tomorrow. When I was younger, my focus was too much on next week, next month, next year. And so I lost track of now. Of today. The nice thing about growing old is that one learns to feel young. Learns to take chances. Risks. And learns to be a better lover. Really, my life has become the pursuit of love. Of course, I do not like much of what goes on in the world. But I have learned not to get upset over it. Because I have no, or little, control over events. Used to be that I thought I could change the world. But I cannot. I can only change myself. My attitudes. My perspectives. And I also have the ability and wherewithal to build a cocoon, of sorts. A refuge. Where I can hide or find shelter from the travails of the world. In a sense, I create my own little world. My haven. My niche. Separate from the mayhem. I chose for the past month to almost totally ignore happenings in the USA and much of the international world. I lived in my immediate environ, and ignored everything else. That's hard to do in modern times. But I find ways. Anyway, I am not sure that I have ever known much of what is really happening in the world. I do not trust the news media. We are fed a distorted reality. We are being misinformed. We are being entertained rather than educated. Because that is what we want. I used to be a member of the media. I am not proud of it. The media has become corrupted. Feeding us slanted news. Idiotic sound bites. Instead of objective stuff. We have a false reality. We aren't what we think we are. We are far worse. Unfortunately, we don't want to face the sad truth. We would be scared out of our wits. --Jim Broede