Everything New Is Old

I seek out the current headlines with great unease, as I anticipate my semi annual vacation to Mexico. I've become hardened to the financial disasters posted in the daily news. After all, I have a steady job with the county and my future seems secure. I am only a few years from retirement. However, now, I am touched by the runaway press coverage of the swine flu outbreak. My vacation is in jeopardy and I'm thinking that's just not fair. I work all year for this time off. I plan ahead, book in advance and prepay everything so that I can have one week of stress free pleasure. Is that too much to ask? Poor me.

Then I read a piece from a fellow blogger who completed our April assignment to the Ditalini Press. Her story, though it be fictional, is based on historical fact and it brings the reality of history repeating itself home to me. She writes of a man leaving to serve his country in what was called the Great War. He survives combat and is brought down instead by the flu epidemic of 1918. The short story reminds me that today's headlines are the same as they were one hundred years ago. We still have men going to war, just in a different part of the globe. We still have poverty and financial crisis, and even the flu hasn't changed all that much. So what's my point? What is it I'm feeling when I see today blurring into yesterday?

Maybe I worry too much. Maybe I feel too sorry for myself, thinking I'm the only one struggling to simply live in peace. If, in all these years, nothing has changed, then what is the point of stressing over today's headlines? Did it help those who died in all the other Great Wars? Did it keep the very young, very old, and very poor from dieing of the flu? Will it help me or those I love to survive any of the same crisis? Of course not. The human race just seems so frail and it's struggle so futile. So perhaps I should stop stressing and just enjoy whatever this day, this very moment, brings me. If pain and disappointment are destined for me, then at least when they find me I won't have wasted these great times worrying about it. I'm going on vacation and it's going to be wonderful. I'm lucky to have the time, money and ability to make the trip. History be damned!