Rant #1,590: Much Ado About Something

Finally, we have reached Friday.

The week is not yet over, or at least my work week is not yet over.

It has been a tumultuous week.

First we learn that David Bowie, who has been battling cancer for the past 19 months or so, finally succumbed to the disease. Only a few scant people knew that he was so sick.

Then, the lottery goes up past $1 billion, people run out and buy tickets, and three people end up splitting the big prize.

Sure, there were other things going on this week, but to be honest with you, they were all overshadowed by these two things, things that caught our fancy more than things that are really and truly important and will have a lasting impact on our lives.

Why is that, that fun and whimsy is more interesting to us than what really matters?

I think it is the way it is because no matter whether we want to admit to it or not, we all live pretty mundane lives.

We wake up, get dressed, go to work, and come home. And then go to sleep.

And then we repeat that five days a week.

That is pretty much what we do during the workweek.

Pretty boring, pretty blah, but that is what we do, and we do it to survive.

David Bowie and the lottery took us off the mundane path and allowed us to dream a little bit, if only for a brief period of time.

Bowie was an avant-garde artist who was the most accessible of his ilk. When we heard his music, it took us to another time and place, away from our otherwise ordinary lives.

The lottery did just about the same thing. The hope of winning a big prize allowed us to dream, to decide what we were going to do when we won the money.

Both of these things took us off the regular path this week, and they made us dream ... and think outside and beyond our usual cocoon that we are in.

But now, with several days separation, the dreaming is over, and we are back to our usual lives.

We wake up, get dressed, go to work, and come home. And then go to sleep.

Sure, we can buy Bowie's new album and see where he was going, and we can learn who the big lottery winners are, and share, in sort of a third person way, how their lives will change now that they are multi-millionaires.

But honestly, the two events were diversions, diversions needed every once in a while in life to take us away from the usual grind.

Now, we all go back to that grind, doing the best we can to make things right in our own lives.

It was interesting while it lasted, though, wasn't it?

Speak to you on Monday.