I didn't watch

Nothing is unusually terrible, and I'm still in "mostly OK" mode, but this was something I was thinking of this morning.

I didn't watch the series finale of My Little Pony.

Back in the day, this would have been unthinkable to me. I was a huge fan (And I still am, don't get me wrong, and I extended that love into the earlier generations, though I've never really seen the old 1980s cartoon - though I might watch it some day if I can find it streaming somewhere).

There are a couple reasons for it.

- I sort of lost interest this last season; the more recent developments....I mean, shows do lose steam after a while and this was how it sort of felt to me. Also, after missing a couple weeks after losing my dad, I never really picked back up.

- My biggest pony-fan friend (Charles Hill) is gone; it made me sad to think "he's not around to see how the series wrapped up" and I admit that was a big part of it.

- But also, I admit some of the creeping dissatisfaction with the world this past couple years has colored it. One thing I love about the show is that it promotes virtues (yes, let's call them what they are) that are often overlooked today: honestly, kindness, generosity, loyalty. (The other two Elements being laughter and "magic"). And sometimes of late, especially given the huge wave of public-officials-on-the-take in my state, especially seeing a highly-placed person at my university talk about "loyalty" while it turned out a prestigious and remunerative new position elsewhere was in the works, and well....some days I feel like:

If you're loyal, you will frequently be disappointed
If you're generous, you will often have that generosity taken advantage of
If you're kind, that kindness may be thrown back in your face, or you may be mocked for it
If you're honest, you may lose out at things while people who are less scrupulous about the truth prosper.

And yes, I know: as I've often (mis)quoted Martin Luther: God help me but I cannot do otherwise.

But right now, some days it feels like there's not much good laughter* in the world, and that the magic - the sparkle - has gone out of things a little bit. And yes, I know: I suppose the world has always been thus, and it's more that I'm just now finding it out for real/there's just too much bad news because there are too many news channels to seek it out and report it, but yeah, I am feeling disappointed in the world and humanity.


(*As opposed to the mean, excluding, mocking laughter that has so long been the province of bullies or, more commonly, their hangers-on)

And yes, this melancholy is also partly brought on by the fact that today was a sort of valedictory sermon by our current minister (next week is his last week, and he asked me - as Head Elder - to do some readings related to "winding up his ministry here" and please, if you're the praying type? Please pray for me next week, that I don't just stand up there and bawl. I really liked this guy, and I'm really worried about our future. I know that churches everywhere are shrinking, but for me a very real and very practical problem is: if I don't have a church in the future, I won't have a support system. I don't have enough friends "on the outside" now, and once I've retired I won't even have the support from work, and I worry about that - it was hard enough finding a driver for the colonoscopy-that-never-happened this past year. And I don't like the thought of having to always pay people - and take whatever gig-economy potluck person I get - for sensitive things like that.

But, I'm just in one of my semi-regular funks of looking at the world and going "Why can't you be better?"

And I know: "be the change you want to see in the world" except I've been trying that for like 30 years with no success whatsoever, and I'm tired.

Oh, someday I will watch the MLP series finale (and I admit I watched the last 10 minutes or so last night, just to reassure myself that Everyone Lives in the End. I doubted they'd go there, given it's a kids' show, but I wanted to be sure. I don't like stories where sympathetic characters get killed off for shock value, or to somehow advance a story that could be advanced in a different way)

And as I said: nothing is terrible, really: I have a pot of beans cooking on the top of the stove and I will use up my leftover bacon making the baked beans out of the Amish cookbook for dinner, and I think I'll go out for a couple hours this afternoon (once the beans are in the oven) and get my exercise by clearing out some of the messy garden areas. But I do feel slightly melancholy; there have been far too many endings in my life in 2019, and one of my once-favorite shows ending is just another one to be melancholy about.

And yeah, nothing IS terrible. At the time-to-greet I didn't get around to say hi to Mike (who usually hugs me) as he was talking with someone else, and after church ended, I thought, "Maybe he'll come up to hug me now?" and I thought "if he doesn't, I'm not going to approach" (this is very much my nature: not asking for things I might want or perhaps even need because I don't want to look too forward). But he did come up to me and say "I missed my hug!" and so I got hugged and that made things a little better, but....

A lot of this is, as I said, not so much "things are terrible" but more "I am tired and kind of disappointed in the world" and it's more a melancholy than a true upset.

I really hope 2020 is better but I admit at this point it's hard to see how it could be, short of something like a "New Jerusalem dropping out of Heaven and landing in our town" as the illustration the minister used in his sermon.