David McElroy

Since this is the weekend when many Americans are frantically trying to get their tax returns ready for the IRS, we’ll look at the world through tax-colored eyes. First, keep in mind that the IRS isn’t heartless. As long as you give them everything, you won’t be punished.

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When Barack Obama was elected president four years ago, we heard a lot of talk about it being a watershed moment in leading us to a post-racial America. If a black man could be elected president, race wasn’t going to matter so much, the theory went. A glance at recent headlines shows we’re nowhere close to this — and I’m not sure we ever will be.

The immediate reactions to the shooting of Trayvon Martin point toward just how deep the fracture lines lie. Blacks — and especially black politicians — lined up strongly against shooter George Zimmerman. The initial narrative we heard was that young black men are under attack in America by white people. (Complicating matters is the fact that Zimmerman is half Hispanic, which muddies the waters a bit, but people selling the narrative are willing to ignore that detail. Of course, calling Zimmerman white since one parent was white is a bit like calling Obama white for having a white mother.)

Al Sharpton and Jesse Jackson have been active in calling for Zimmerman’s arrest and punishment. Barack Obama was quick to align himself with Martin when he said, “If I had a son, he’d look like Trayvon.” And the New Black Panther Party offered a $10,000 bounty for the “capture” of Zimmerman. I wonder if they would have been upset and ready to agitate if the races had been reversed.

On the other hand, gun groups were quick to start a defense fund for Zimmerman. Texas attorneys offered $10,000 toward his defense. And plenty of people were quick to believe Zimmerman’s side of the story. I wonder if they would have been so quick if it had been a black homeowner who had shot a white teen-ager.

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When I look around myself at the society we’ve built, I frequently want to run away — to a life that’s simpler, quieter and more contemplative. I haven’t found the place to live that way, but I’m still looking.

In the mid-19th century, Henry David Thoreau gave himself a two-year experiment in self-reliance and contemplation that he eventually wrote about  in his book, “Walden, or, Life in the Woods.” Even if you don’t see the world the same as Thoreau did — and I don’t in some instances — the ideas in the book are important to those who are desperate to find more meaning in a modern world that feels plastic and sterile and dead.

An old song by Pat Terry says, “The whole world lies awake in its bed — and they wanna know if there’s life before death.” I don’t have any question that there’s life after death, but I sometimes wonder if there’s life before death — because what we call life frequently doesn’t seem like really living. Not everyone feels this, but many of us do. Maybe not all the time, but often enough to make us wonder whether we’re living our lives as we really want to.

Thoreau sensed that most people around him were unhappy even if they weren’t conscious of the reasons for it. In “Walden,” he said, “The mass of men lead lives of quiet desperation. What is called resignation is confirmed desperation.” I see people who have resigned themselves to living a life they don’t love — with people who don’t understand them and feeling awash with contradictory desires and unrealized expectations — and I see desperate people.

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