“…and curse Sir Walter Raleigh/He was such a stupid git….” – John Lennon

“…and the time will come when you see we’re all one/And life flows on within you and without you….” – George Harrison

John and George in their last picture together, circa 1974 (image courtesy FeelNumb.com)

I wrote a couple of days ago about John Lennon’s great White Album song, “I’m So Tired.” It didn’t seem appropriate in that essay to get into my personal appropriation of John’s tune.

I’ve been listening to the Fabs more lately than usual. (That is saying something, since I listen to them a lot by any reasonable standard.) Two songs that I’ve found myself repeating again and again have been “I’m So Tired” and George’s beautiful meditation from Sgt. Pepper, “Within You Without You.” Slightly mad? Why, yes, thanks for asking.

There’s method to my madness.We listen to music for lots of reasons. Solace. Inspiration. Motivation. Sentimentality. These days, I, like a lot of people, have been looking for solace.

We live these days in a country that feels more at odds with itself than it did even during the sixties. The constant turmoil that many, perhaps most of us, experience when we look at the news or at social media seems (because it is) unrelenting. I can speak for no one else, but this turmoil has been exhausting.

Not to put too fine a point on it, I’m so tired.

To paraphrase the eminent psychiatrist Lucy Van Pelt, the first step for dealing with a problem is to identify it. Here’s a partial list of what I’m so tired of:

• I’m so tired of not being able to tell one political party from the other.
• I’m so tired of elected representatives not giving a damn about the people who elected them but instead pledging their sole allegiance to  moneyed interests individual and corporate.
• I’m so tired of worrying about whether the planet I leave behind for my children and grandchildren will be inhabitable.
• I’m so tired of people whose excellent health care is provided to them free by me and other taxpayers doing their damnedest to make health care unaffordable for me and other taxpayers.
• I’m so tired of limitless sums being spent on war abroad for reasons which are at best dubious.
• I’m so tired of lies being  referred to by deliberately misleading terms such as inoperative statements or alternative facts.
• I’m so tired of women being treated as breeding stock.
• I’m so tired of watching native Americans have to fight to protect what little of this country that hasn’t been stolen from them.
• I’m so tired of seeing people beaten and killed by those whose foremost sworn duty is to protect those people.
• I’m so tired of those who insist that ignorance is equivalent to knowledge, that opinion is equivalent to fact, that bombast and abuse are equivalent to reasoned discourse.
• I’m so tired of the unbridled contempt for all forms of human endeavor that do not focus on the making of money.
• I’m so tired of people who purport to practice a religion whose chief tenet is love spewing hate by their words and deed.

As I said above, this is but a partial list. I could go on. But as I also said above, I’m so tired….