PreOccupied

Lately, I have become preoccupied with the word PREOCCUPIED. As the world continues to spin completely out of control, the media has become inundated with editorialized information, and nobody trusts the "other side" politically, it is difficult to ignore America's preoccupation. When I looked up the word preoccupied, I realized right away, it was one of those tricky deals. A form of the word was contained within the definition. The word itself basically means the state of thinking about something that remains in the forefront of your thoughts. Our entire nation is preoccupied with war and agression and politics and job security and debt and retirement or no retirement, you name it . . . despair looms ominously over everything. We are all going about our "daily lives" with all this other stuff on our mind and that is being preoccupied. It's as if the concerns ultimately take over every subject and conversation, and then the controversy takes over every concern. It's mind-boggling to hear the insistence for controversy and contention over these matters, which of course leads to further thought relating to these matters, because we must know where we stand, or at least where we don't and the preoccupation continues, and grows. The secondary definition also included a form of the word, but I found it to be even more alarming, as it described preoccupied as a mental state of being. So, the programming is working on all of us, one way or another, although it does seem to have been leaning heavily toward the right. In my own preoccupation with this word, I did divert for a moment to obsess over another concern. All of this programming! We have to be right or left. As if we aren't already overwhelmed with topics of despair and disillusionment, we have a nonstop media that just continues to polarize issues. These issues are life and death and our children's future, not politics! It's bigger than opinions, and the results will be seen and felt for decades to come. So, as a tension breaker and stress management exercise, I discovered a fun little acronym in reference to the Conservative Radio Agressive Propaganda. And after seeing this for what it is, I was able to muster the courage for the dreaded definition of preoccupied, when viewed as a compound word. I looked up 'pre' which is a prefix meaning: before or prior to. So it is now clear that this preoccupation with unwaranted war and polarized politics is simply the best way to avoid the realization that as we surrender our rights, calling it security, and spend money we don't have, calling it appropriations, we are choosing euphemisms for captivity and debt. Throughout history we can see this has had devastating results in other countries. As America remains preoccupied with opinions of issues, we may be overlooking the truth and the facts that we are actually in the time prior to that of being Occupied. PreOccupied

. . .Sufficient unto the day is the evil thereof.