In “Last of My Kind,” Jason Isbell sings:

Mama says God won’t give you too much to bear
Might be true in Arkansas, but I’m a long, long way from there

I’m reading posts from friends this morning who are facing a very rough time right now—money, illness, death, as well as deadening despair over the state of the Union.

I’m thinking about the campaign ads on TV and the fact that I now live in a state where candidates enthusiastically run on Trump’s coattails.

So much noise, and my attempt to create a space where I can live out what days I have left means I have to retreat inward, making a fetish of irrelevance. I keep writing and I keep Lullaby Pit alive because … why?

Corinthians 10:13

The Bible says:

No temptation has overtaken you except what is common to mankind. And God is faithful; he will not let you be tempted beyond what you can bear…

This verse has morphed into “God will never give you more than you can bear.” The original verse, though, refers to temptation, not burden. Not sorrow. Not pain, not grief.

People break every day. “God” does pile more on people than they can bear. Strong people, resolute people, brilliant people, good people. The people who make the world worth living in.

Even when I say, as I have been for years, I believe the good guys will eventually win the war, I’ve never said there won’t be casualties. I’ve always accepted I might be one of them, and it’s a near certainty that people I love and respect and cherish will be, too.

The truth is that it has always been this way. Bad people in pursuit of power and wealth have been making life unbearable since there were people. When we think about happier days, those times when our condition wasn’t so unrelentingly unbearable, we’re not really thinking about better times. We’re merely thinking about times when it wasn’t so bad for us. Multiple memes in the last month have pointed to Minneapolis and said, in essence, that white people are finally learning what blacks have known for hundreds of years.

Maybe times were better because we were the bad guys?

When I say that I think the good guys will win, what the hell am I thinking? If history makes anything at all clear, it’s that the dynamic of greed and power and depression is the human default.

I’ve been proving for decades that I don’t have any solutions.