New Year? - 2012 and its Effects

I have been reflecting a lot, which tends to happen every year as each one approaches its end. This year, for all intents and purposes, has sucked. Personally and otherwise. I feel like every time I finally find something that restores my faith in man kind something else happens that completely destroys it. I try to remain strong and hopeful because I don't want my little girl to grow up around someone who is sarcastic about everything. I guess I am just trying to make sense of it all, but sometimes when I look around at what goes on in the world I feel like I am on crazy pills.

There have been a lot of horrendous events that have taken place in the last few months starting with Sandy and more recently the Newtown shootings and a few horrendous deaths on the NYC subway , that have made me think a lot about life and the decisions that we make. I think that what has struck me most is that looking around at all my friends and family and the different ways in which we have all reacted to the results of natural disasters or the violence that human beings inflict upon one another, I saw a common denominator in the reaction. This common denominator was a sense of outrage at the unpredictability of life, and this reaction struck me as funny. Why is it such an outrage when life ends abruptly or when with a pattern of the weather someone's life work gets dragged away with the tide? I guess that the real question that I am trying to ask is, what makes us humans think that we have the right to expect things to be a certain way forever even though we know that inherently this world is always in constant motion and constant change, and that these two aspect are the only certain things we have? Is it that we feel that we are so advanced that we should have figured out a way to make everything predictable, or is it fear to admit that we are really not in control of anything? We spend so much time deceiving ourselves into believing that everything we do is permanent that we forget that it isn't and that much like ourselves everything will come to pass. Why are we in such denial of our own fragility and so afraid of our lack of permanence in this world? And knowing that we have such a small and unpredictable amount of time in this world, why do some of us chose to spend that time making things unpleasant for others rather than doing something that will make us feel good? Why do we get so stuck on obligations, work, nonsense, etcetera, etcetera, instead of appreciating life?

It is hard to break the bond of obligations because we always feel that we need to do things either out of responsibility or expectations (self imposed or from others), but why do we do things that go against us living that bliss that life is supposed to be?

I really hope that in 2013 we all find that bliss.