If you’re wondering why the Weakly Post has not been faithfully adding to your already-clogged in-box, it’s because its battery has been dead. It has nothing to do with congressional hearings, trade talks or government shutdowns.
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The other day I needed to use our extra, backup car. It has been parked inactively for about a month. Most batteries give up the ghost after that time of inactivity, but you know how time passes so fast that a month is like a few days. The only sound coming from under the hood was that ominous click, click, click. Dead battery.
So, I fire up the pickup and hook up the cables, red to red, black to black. In no time the engine fires up, good as new. Almost. It lasts less than five minutes. Upon mechanical inspection it was determined that the battery had permanently expired.
I recite this simple experience to say that we should never be without cables to jumpstart dead batteries. Now to the real motive behind this stupid event…overcoming the flu.
For almost the entire month of February the plague of flu locusts has invaded our home. If you’ve experienced this dread malady, you know the consequences. If not, take it from me, avoid all human contact till the scourge is over-past.
Several things happen while in this catatonic state. Inactivity takes over. First, sitting in a comfortable chair beats most other alternatives, like walking the dog or even cooking a meal. All the while your battery is losing power, draining away silently into the stale ether of your home.
Next, you sit so long it becomes a way of life. All interest in the president’s character drains out and leaves you with a dead state of mind. You begin to have mental images. You see yourself sitting in a row of rocking chairs with other brain-dead rockers at Camellia Manor, placed there in the morning, hustled off to your room for naps. Dinner on a tv tray is the highlight of the day. Such mental images do a lot to remind us to start up our batteries often.
The downward spiral is not over yet. By now you’ve lost all interest in reading, the news is irrelevant to you, and even the comedy of Democratic presidential hopefuls is no longer entertaining. You’ve been to this carnival before. Mandates and promises of something-for-all and hints of future reparations to all disenfranchised persons, living and dead, no longer touch you. You don’t figure to be around much any longer.
But then one day you wake up. You feel strangely new again. You wonder if you’ve been raptured or transcended to Nirvana. You’re afraid to be too optimistic, dashed hopes are worse than no hopes at all. You’re hungry again. No, you’re ravenous now. Nothing is safe that has calories printed on the label. You feel the battery is charged. But wait.
You fuel up, determined to get back the wind your lungs have been missing for so many weeks. You bound out of the house, intent on attacking the sidewalk with a brisk walk. You make ten steps, collapse on the front door steps. Your battery is dead.
Such is the plague of flu this year. It has sapped our discipline, sitting has broadened our rear ends and deadened our desires for engagement in life. We need a jump start badly. Unfortunately, there is no quick fix. Discipline has drained out of our batteries and they’re dead.
Research shows it takes about 60 days to develop a new habit, but just a few days to lose all incentive. This is what the flu has done to the Weakly Post. So today I am pounding the keyboard in hopes incentive will return.
Getting re-started is never easy. As Nike says, you just gotta do it. There is no quick jumpstart.
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Here’s hoping you’ve avoided this plague. If you have, this email will be as meaningless ramblings of an old man. If not, hook up your cables to something that has life and fire up your battery up again.
Bud Hearn
March 4, 2019