Just when I’m cantankerous and crusty, and proud of it, out of the blue, all of a sudden, I’m fixating on ‘goodness.’
Maybe because I happened to experience a marvelous act of goodness, and, afterward, driving home, surprisingly, people weren’t going nuts speeding, and running red lights, and in other ways acting rather obnoxious. That was, for a change, very uplifting.
Had I somehow sailed from a maelstrom into calm, gentle waters? Was I in a dream sequence… in another dimension?
Why can’t folks be expressing more goodness than its antonym… badness?… I began wondering. Could it be that more folks than I’ve been thinking are just genuinely good, but I’m not so much aware of it, mainly because there’s always news about badness… more so than goodness?
I mean… earlier that morning before I was swept up in such a marvelous feeling of positivity, I’d been hearing the usual news.
There was a story in the news website, Mediaite, about Laura Ingraham stopping Larry Kudlow from saying “something nice about a Democrat.”
Ms. Ingraham hosts the Ingraham Angle on Fox News Channel, and Mr. Kudlow is a financial news commentator for Fox Business.
That she would stop a colleague from saying something nice, just because something nice would be about a Democrat… what’s more to say about that?
Escaping from badness is going to be challenging, if I can’t break my habit of keeping up with the news, and stumbling upon a raft of stories, like the one about Georgia Congresswoman Marjorie Taylor Greene, in a New York Daily News article, angering “Democrats and fellow Republicans alike.”
There’s no discrimination on her part, so to speak? She seems miffed at just about everyone.
How will I continue welcoming goodness into my life, if I’m not slamming the door on current events?
I’m getting conflicted.
You can bet your bottom dollar, I’m thinking to myself, that the next time I’m out driving around, I’ll not be witnessing other drivers’ best behavior, when good behavior… sometimes almost an anomaly, these days… is getting to be about as rare as some endangered animals.
I mean… the daily traffic reports are getting to be ridiculous, around here, in the San Francisco Bay Area… with accidents galore… hit-and-run accidents, vehicles flipping over, and even worse carnage. There must be a reason accident attorneys are advertising their services so constantly on TV.
Speaking of endangered animals, if people keep driving — like mad, so to speak — us humans might wind up being as endangered as other endangered species.
It’s going to be challenging maintaining this goodness thing, when I’m reading, “Is it woke to teach kindness?” in USA Today. And, reading in Rolling Stone about a “Christian nationalist and pro-Trump supporter” insisting that “believers should be the ones writing the laws.”
The professional basketball online site, Fadeaway World, described Golden State Warriors and Sacramento Kings fans brawling outside Chase Center in San Francisco, after the Warriors defeated the Kings in their recent playoff series game.
As goodness keeps beckoning to me, all this news keeps getting to me.
And what’s more to say, I’m wondering, other than the word featured in my previous Daily Post column… ‘goddammit!’
Harvey Radin is former senior vice president in charge of corporate communications and media relations, Bank of America Western Region. He makes his home in Redwood City, CA.