Crumbling Bridges

Our nation’s infrastructure is crumbling. Many of us are learning this for the first time because of a massive bridge collapse in Minneapolis, MN, that made cost dozens of people their lives and made the national news. The governor of Minnesota defended the bridges “structurally deficient” status by pointing out that there are over 80,000 bridges sharing the same rating throughout the United States. Reassuring, isn’t it?

Country music legend Merle Haggard has been talking about our nation’s crumbling infrastructure for years. As a traveling troubadour Mr. Haggard is in a rare position to be able to criss-cross the nation’s highways and by-ways on a semi-annual basis. Unlike your typical businessman or tourist Haggard and his crew travel by bus and as such they see first-hand the status of bridges, tunnels and roads. Haggard has been outspoken about the need for money to be redirected into our own country’s maintenance and, unfortunately, the recent bridge collapse puts him in the position of being able to say “I told you so.”

Now politicians and journalists alike are scrambling to cover the story of our nation’s inferior infrastructure after the fact. At this point we are so far behind its not even funny. But people don’t want to hear about maintenance, politicians don’t want to address it, and journalists don’t want to cover it. Maintenance is dull. The news instead needs to grab headlines and sell advertising. In a debt-driven consumer based society no one wants to spend their hard-earned money on making sure their bridges are structurally sound – not when there are shiny new iPods to buy and shiny new bombs to drop.

Ebb and Flow

There is a common term in computer programming that goes like this: garbage in garbage out. It applies to everything, government, sex, road maintenance, music, economics. We get what we give and if we ain’t giving we aren’t gonna be doing much getting. So if you’re sitting around and thinking you don’t like what you’ve got then think about what you can contribute to life to make yours better. It doesn’t take much more than effort – but even effort can be hard to come by when things seem entirely futile.

Baby Steps

Only within the past few years have I really gotten good at producing work. That comes in the form of writing, art, and music and I’m not saying I’m the world’s greatest at any of these endeavors but I have gotten myself into the habit of creating. That happened for me because of a couple of things. First I abolished any notions I had of perfection. I know I’m not perfect, I never will be perfect, and ultimately I’m not trying to be perfect. I’m just trying to do the best I can, or sometimes not even that. Sometimes I just try and do something just to get myself rolling and I don’t even try and do it all that well. Second I started learning how to break larger projects down into a series of steps. Trish and I have a Buddhist saying we picked up from somewhere: “Snails climb Mount Fuji.” By moving in a direction we get somewhere. It sounds simple enough but it is really easy to just stop moving.

In laboratory experiments rats that were subjected to a relatively moderate dose of cocaine acted as one might expect – they became agitated and anxious and moved faster. But when rats were subjected to massive doses of cocaine they stopped moving altogether. The theory is that the rat’s brains were so over-stimulated by the cocaine and their neurons were taking in so much information at once that they simply could not function. This happens to us when we are over-stimulated by all the worries and stressors that life can throw at us. If we aren’t able to quiet our brains and boil our path of action down to a series of tangible steps we can easily become overwhelmed to a point where we cease to function productively.

Slow down, reach out. Breathe and stretch. Maintain your bridges and keep your feet moving forward. The best time to start is now.