2020 Sucks...or is This a Time of New Character of our Nation Emerging!

My wife and I were riding our bicycles today, and a man came by wearing a T Shirt "2020 SUCKS".  We laughed and he smiled and I thought, "Wow, we are in the worst economy since the Great Depression started in 1929.  We are experiencing the worst Viral Pandemic since 1918, over 102 years ago, when the Spanish Flu killed over 50,000,000 world wide at at least 650,000 people in the United States."   

We have all witnessed the lowest and worst segment of Americans, yelling, and fighting, with hostile calls for 'give us our nation back', and "no rules, no shut downs, just let us do as we please" with no safety measures for the epidemic.  Yesterday the news reported that a guard told a lady and her daughter they need to wear a face mask to go in the retail store. They refused, and the husband shot and killed the security guard.  No doubt the "worst" of our society is present these days. 

But, this is also a time, when the deeper, good, better character of Americans is emerging. It is, with thousands of people showing heroic compassion to help others, to share, to build, to exhibit love and generosity to others.  I have often wondered that if this generation of the USA were tested, if we would be up to the test, or if we would see crazies, roaming the streets with guns and bats willing to fight, murder, vandalize and create social disorder.  But, my fears have been quelled, at the heroic generosity and kindness of most Americans during this time of testing.

Yes, the better character of Americans is up to the test of a ruined economy and a disastrous epidemic.

So this article is stressing a simple experience of beauty, something to remind us, that some things of balance, order, continuity will remain, and continue. Perhaps even flourish.

Our main house is built with a completely surrounded courtyard with bedrooms and windowed walls surrounding it. It is open to the sky so we can enjoy the blue sky and passing clouds in the daytime and wonderful starlit skies at night.  It adds a nice area of "living space" to our home, with light, clear cool dry air, and visitations from nature.

One little female visitor "guest" to our courtyard, you can barely make out, a tiny hummingbird, who has been guarding our courtyard of late.  If another hummer comes in to sip from our three sugar water bottle feeders, she chases them away. Look Closely and you can see her.  

So as I sat out in the courtyard reading I noticed that she repeatedly flew under an eve, and I thought she mistook a line of decorative lights for a flower, but then noticed she was actually building a nest out of saliva, cottonwood 'feathers' and what appeared to be spider webs.  I took a photo of my thumb so you could get a perspective of size. It was all coming together. Her search for a protected area. Her finding a place with food, shelter, and only that "clueless" human (me) hanging around.  I became more intrigued.  

So I got a ladder and went up for a closer look.  

If you hadn't seen her fly to it you might have never noticed.  Look closely to the right of the hanging light and you will see one of the lights on the cord has an odd looking object on it. Looked like an innocent piece of trash or something.  Then I began to think, "nest"....a camouflaged nest????!!!

Now I was curious and more excited so I climbed a bit higher, and look what I saw.  Something most of us rarely see.  I share it with you, today, oh if only your little children or grand children could see this and the wonder of that little hummingbird mother watching every move, to be sure we didn't hurt her "family". 

Look at this beautiful sight.  Here is elegant beauty, continuity, a special vision of two tiny eggs smaller than your your tiniest fingernail on your little finger.  Two living things, totally dependent upon a hummingbird mother and father.  Within is a life that will emerge with almost magical beauty, two baby hummingbirds, waiting for this beautiful world, that will emerge, here in 2020.  In my view this gives us a deeper sense that beauty, life, new joys await us.  Recession or Corona Virus isn't the end, perhaps it is preparing us for a deeper more mature wonder of life. 

Be happy my friend.  This entire combination of events, Corona, Epidemic, Recession, may be preparing you for the time when you will "hatch" and emerge  to do deep, marvelous, wondrous things.  This world will go on.  The beauty of new creation will not stop...

Hatch and do well.  It is a new world out there for us all!    

 

Feel free to share this with your friends or loved ones.  

Let me hear from you if you have something positive to add.

Ben Boothe, Sr.  www.benboothe.com.   www.bootheglobalperspectives.com.   direct cell-phone: 817 793 1484.   benboothe@gmail.com