On Feb. 3, billionaire Bill Gates said on television that he’s “optimistic” about the state of the world. He believes that “life is getting better.” The American Dream, of course, is the hope of unlimited accumulation, achievement, hope for the future, and earthly fulfillment.

Look at all of the electronic technology at our disposal. What can’t we buy cheaply at Walmart?

But I wonder what we see once we get beneath the shiny veneer of our superficially optimistic culture and “life” and look deeply into what’s really going on.

I’ll let America’s great poet/visionary/psychologist Walt Whitman tell us in these words from his “Song of the Open Road”:

“Behold through you as bad as the rest/Through the laughing, dancing supping, of people/Inside of dresses and ornaments, inside of those washed and trimm’d faces/Behold a secret silent loathing and despair..../Smartly attired, countenance smiling, form upright, death under the breastbones, hell under the skull bones..../Keeping fair with the customs, speaking not a syllable of itself/Speaking of any thing else but never of itself.”

JERRY GILL
Hertford