The second half of the year has started and with a pre-existing bad back (stenosis of the spinal canal) and now, osteoarthritis of the left hip, I don’t feel like the prancing rooster or cockerel that I’m supposed to be under the Chinese zodiac.
I feel like a dead cock, a sitting duck for bad fortune.
But I have suffered setbacks before: friends playing me out, business partners cheating me of money, vicious assholes slandering me anonymously, relatives rude to me, playing oneupmanship with me, hah, what haven’t I experienced?
I am still standing tall. I will survive.
I may feel like crap, but trust me, I will make it; I may even outlive you.
Just watch me.
In any case, there are other matters more important than the pain I am suffering.
For example, are you aware that there are at least two pogroms, two genocides going on in the world today?
The term “genocide” was coined by Polish lawyer Raphael Lemkin in 1944.
Over the years, the meaning of the term has evolved, but Lemkin had a broad understanding of it. “Genocide does not necessarily mean the immediate destruction of a nation, except when accomplished by mass killings,” he noted. “It is intended rather to signify a coordinated plan of different actions aiming at the destruction of essential foundations of the life of national groups.” Such a plan is unfolding now in Myanmar (the Rohingyas) and in Xinjiang (the Uyghurs). As in the cases that inspired Lemkin, genocide today is happening under a shield of state sovereignty.
Entire races are being eliminated and slowly being wiped out, so what’s a bit of back and hip pain?
Perspective is everything, my friend.