The New Cool

Spend a little time on social media and it's hard to see how cynicism has become the new cool. I will admit that I am something of a cynic. I was first told this when I was about nineteen years old. I dated a woman in her late twenties (I was mature for my age.) She was intelligent and sophisticated and had a couple of college degrees. I did my best to keep up but when you lack education, as I did at the time, you try to follow along as best you can. (I am still much less educated than I would like to be, but them's the breaks!)

When she called me a cynic, I wasn't a hundred percent sure of what it meant. I know now, and I guess I could say I am a part-time cynic. I spend a lot of time around politics, I read some news on occasion, and I have a Facebook account. How could I not be?

But there is a side of me that wants there to be meaning to everything. There's a part of me that looks for meaning and even tries to create meaning in the most ordinary of things.

But it's so easy to be a cynic. It's practically forced upon us. We're told to hurry, to move along. We're convinced we don't have time to be kind and thoughtful even as we sit on the couch and binge-watch every episode of "Friends" for the third time. Humor, real humor, has been replaced with sarcasm. Good deeds are viewed, you guessed it, cynically.

I think I'll try to become a little less cynical. I'll do my best to see things in a more open and accepting way. I'll try to prove that old girlfriend wrong. Not that's she'll notice. We haven't talked in decades and she'd probably on season whatever of the latest must-see rerun. Oops! There I go again!

Adolfo Jimenez is an author, poet, and blogger. He lives in Hollywood, Florida. He has published ten books, which you can find here.

A Contactless Future

 The COVID-19 plandemic and its fallout should have become a distant memory by now, but the government would never let such a useful “crisis” go to waste. They made the mistake of giving us an inch, we took a mile, and now the Delta Variant has been unleashed upon the populace.

As I sit here in the early morning gloom of a rainy South Florida summer day, I am browsing articles, investment opportunities, and the like. I keep finding how Contactless features have been incorporated into everything from groceries to real estate transactions. Even as the pandemic fails, the main symptom, which is the fear of coming into close proximity to other people, keeps getting its lease on life extended.

Add this to cancel culture, critical race theory, political correctness, and the general vitriol we are living with here in Don and Joe’s Great American Experiment, and it’s getting harder to feel optimistic about America’s future.

I am a touchy-feely guy, though I save that mostly for my loved ones. I don’t want to never shake a stranger’s hand. I don’t want to be afraid to hand something, anything, to another human being. I am not an island and I don’t want to be. 

Give me contact or give me death!

Adolfo Jimenez is an author, poet, and blogger. He lives in Hollywood, Florida. He has published ten books, which you can find here.