David McElroy

making sense of a dysfunctional culture

future

Leave your dead past behind; that’s not where you’re going

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Late Sunday night, I had the old Beatles song “Yesterday” on my mind because it came up in discussion yesterday. As the lyrics floated through my mind, I found myself realizing — almost with surprise — that I can’t identify with the song’s longing for something better from the past.

I’m not exactly happy with where I am now. There are certainly periods in the past when I had it better — felt more love and had more money. All of that is true.

But I long for the future, not for yesterday.

I believe in tomorrow being what I’ve been looking for. I believe that the best days lie ahead of me. I believe there’s love waiting for me. I believe there is success beyond what I’ve dared to dream. And I think it’s a good thing that those better times are in the future, not in the past.

Yesterday is dead.

I’m focused today on the things I need to do to make tomorrow what I want it to be.

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Without peaceful breakup plan, U.S. faces violent, angry collapse

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The United States is a speeding train filled with people who hate each other. Some groups try to take over the engine and force everybody to go their way. Many other people are just trying to travel on the train and ignore the hate-filled people fighting to take over the engine. They just want to live their lives and be left alone.

But as the train speeds faster and faster through the dark night of a rotting culture, almost all of the people on board ignore what’s obvious. This train is speeding toward the edge of a cliff — and those who don’t get off are about to be in a terrible, violent crash into a deadly abyss.

A society in denial about the obvious looming disaster makes me question my own perceptions of reality. Either I’m crazy — which is possible — or else the collective public is suffering mass delusion which blinds them to the cliff ahead.

This country is simmering with group anger and resentment — and those of each group have a narrative which paints them as the real victims.

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It’s great to visit Memory Lane, but it’s fatal to try to live there

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I took a shortcut Friday afternoon from my office to my barber shop that took me through an industrial area where I used to spend a lot of time.

I hadn’t been on that part of Oxmoor Road in Homewood for about 15 years. Several of the printing companies I used to deal with — when I was a political consultant — are located in the area, so I was flooded with memories of late-night visits to do press-checks on mail pieces for my clients.

I printed dozens of jobs at Craftsman Printing right over there. Across from them was the old building where PressTech used to be before the owner — a man who did me more favors than I can count — unexpectedly killed himself on the press floor late one night.

My memory was flooded with faces and images and sensations of my time in the area. Part of me enjoyed the sweetly bitter sensation of experiencing a past which is now dead, but another part of me wanted to leave the area and never return. And then I had a sudden thought.

Memory Lane is a one-way street — and it’s a dead end.

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