Restart

Who knows why these things randomly happen, but my Dashboard on my computer just decided it was tired of opening for me. So I went to my go-to personal tech support guy at school—Saint Stephen, we call him— and he messed around with things for five minutes and finally said, “Try re-starting.” And that’s all it took. 

In fact, 9 out of 10 times, that’s exactly what’s needed to troubleshoot on the computer and perhaps it’s the same in life too. We used to call it a “do-over” when I was a kid. It’s comforting to know that such a simple solution is often all that’s needed. 

I’m looking forward to a big “re-start” in November of 2020, a chance to get serious about the democracy the Constitution promised having now seen how fragile it is when ignorance, mean-spiritedness, apathy and narcissism have their way. But the climate-change issue feels like a different ballgame. Approaching the time when the only re-start is a dire one—humans out of the picture and the earth tries again, maybe with a different species at top. Or a few leftover humans beginning the gene pool again. Preferably not Republicans. 

Meanwhile, the world keeps spinning around. Second Spring Concert tonight, the Warriors won the first game of Round 3, I finished Season 5 of an excellent series called A Place to Call Home and plenty of conflict, tension, deep problems there, but all in human-sized proportion and the bad guys (and gals) mostly getting their just desserts. It happens, sometimes. 

And when things look bleak, don’t forget this simple advice: 

Restart!