The Futility of Form (written Jan. 29, 2017)

The views expressed are the writer's ONLY and not those affiliated with the writer, including employers, sponsors, etc., past or present.

What have we to thank for these times? It is the realizing who we are not. Prescience is a rare commodity, more valuable than ever. The genius of the short story or novel, at times, is to take us backwards (flashback) and forwards (foreshadowing) in time. We've seen it over and over again, how handshakes and palm pressing and the beating of chests in manners so triumphant have been excoriated by future generations as nothing but a futile exercise in appeasing the leader's ego. And all that is remembered, much to the chagrin of the one dead and gone (if it were possible that he or she could look on somehow), is the triumph of the human will over their petty idiosyncrasies. Oh what a strong yearning we have to be loved! But at what cost? 

In Ovid's Metamorphoses, Pyramus and Thisbe were able to "feel their way" through a wall. All thought wrong what they were doing, or represented, except themselves. They knew love would carry the day, despite society's whims and fancies and expectations, and wall, given only a passing glance, its function or role all but nullified, as the lovers were able to "pass the accents of love through it in safety." It was what they felt inside: thoughts and yearnings, passions and desires, triumphing over form, to the extent that form serves as a conduit for the more important thing(s). How often do we, only to serve our own insecurities, attempt to make form the end all?

So now we are going through a bit of a metamorphosis, of sorts, but in the inverse: straying from what we have always been known to be as as a country. The "making of waves," signing of certain executive order(s) really has to be called into question, because some seem to lack a "rational relationship" (a legal term, doctrine, premise, upon which courts base constitutionality) with their purported purpose, one which is to make us "safe" (laughable considering all the contentiousness that it is creating), etc: a "blanket" order, from which one can infer a lack of scrutiny, denying entry into the U.S. people from certain countries, mostly Muslim, including those facing hostilities in their own coutries, and those whose aid we enlisted in fighting the war on terror. 

All this seems to be, once again, the futility of form, or safeguarding of ego, "legacy" (which belongs to one, and one only) over content (sweet, sweet content, or substance: the essence of who and what we are) or legitimate concerns. Appeasing one (antithetical to the group procesees we so highly regard) can be so, so costly. God bless all.