Author: Susan Marie Molloy

Behold! Here is a quiet corner for narratives, sentiments, opinions, encouragements, and reflections on embracing the interior life, creating a haven at home, and removing toxicity.

The Darkness of the World.

The world is messed up.

If you are paying even the tiniest bit of attention to what’s going on in the world, you might just finally realize that this world is more evil than you would ever imagine, and with vastly complicit help not only from political leaders, but also from the average populace.

I’m sometimes surprised at how jaded I’ve become.  As a young idealist way back in the old days, I had all the optimistic and positive outlooks anyone could have.  That’s saying a lot.  Last year, with a new President in office, I barely delved deep into the current events.  I had it in my mind that he was the same as he was in his first term, so what was there to worry about?  This year began just as pacific for me, until February 28 with the war, and since then, well, you know how nutty everything has become.  Or has it?

My best friend mentioned to me that he noticed that this President wasn’t the same, and maybe so since last fall.  That’s when I took a better look and realized he was on to something.  Yes, he certainly is not the guy we voted for.  We were all duped.

People in general have changed, and vastly so since 2020.  It seems that people have such ease in lying right to your face.  They’re ruder.  They even seem to be lazier.  None of it is good.

The Church isn’t the Church I grew up in.  It’s now the Synodal Church.  The true Roman Catholic Church exists, but one must diligently look for it in other places.  I question the current Pope in the form of Robert Prevost, because what he teaches is, well, all over the place with little consistency for Roman Catholicism.

Nevertheless, I think, the longer a person is on this Earth and seriously pays attention to the idiocy that seems to accelerate by the hour, just about anyone could get pretty jaded.  That’s why I am working towards being in the world, but not OF this world.  It’s sometimes a struggle, because I have it in my head that I need to know what’s going on in the world now, for instance, when the bomb is going to be dropped.  Conversely, isn’t it better to not know, and just be spiritually ready for it exploding at any minute?  Yeah, probably.

The moral disorder in our world is far more profound than the everyday vapid scandals people argue about.  It extends beyond routine political dishonesty and the familiar patterns of institutional failures.  What we are now being confronted with instead are deeper, more sinister forms of corruption; systems of exploitation and abuse that flourish in secrecy and rely on the complacency of the very structures meant to safeguard the vulnerable.  These forces are not isolated or accidental; they are organized, persistent, and woven through the generations from the beginning of time.  Their influence reaches into the institutions that shape public life: government, law, media, entertainment, finance, sports, religious establishments, et al.  This is perhaps why meaningful accountability rarely materializes.  The problem is not that the system has malfunctioned; the problem is that the system, as it currently operates, protects the very darkness it should be exposing.  The world is operating exactly how it’s supposed to, with all the evil engrained in it.

Drain the swamp?  Catchy little slogan, that is.  Instead of draining, the loudest mouths just went ahead and joined the swamp.  Why not?  It’s profitable, and in so many ways, too.

It is naïve to think that the ordinary general public will rise to meet these challenges.  Sure, it’s a nice thought that people will wake up and fight for a successful end to malevolence, but in reality, most people, overwhelmed by the pace of modern life and the cozy comfort of laziness and apathy, have settled into becoming passive observers rather than active participants.  Assuredly, outrage flares briefly online with an angry post typed from behind the keyboard, a click of a shared headline, a momentary surge of indignation, but only to retreat into familiar routines.  But when the moment any public criticism touches celebrities or political figures, the reaction is even more predictable: people defend the evil and/or the evil doer or just shut down and move on to something insipid and vapid, which is usually their comfort zone.  Their attachment to public figures functions as modern idolatry, a sick and macabre loyalty that overrides discernment and sensibility.  Many people will defend entertainers, influencers, government notables, popes and televangelists, and other public personalities despite recurring scandals, unanswered questions, weird speeches from pulpits, and patterns of troubling associations.  For them to confront those realities would require them to acknowledge that their long‑held assumptions were misplaced, that trust was given too freely, and that the narratives shaping their lives were not as benevolent as they believed.  For many, that admission is too costly; therefore, comfort becomes preferable to clarity, and distraction becomes easier than responsibility.

There is also a deeper layer of wrongdoing that most people cannot bear to confront.  Beneath the surface of public life exist networks, institutions, and hidden spaces where exploitation thrives, albeit hidden.  These are not the sensationalized fantasies people dismiss, but the quieter, more pervasive forms of abuse and corruption that flourish when shielded from scrutiny.  The very idea of such concealed systems unsettles people, not only because of the moral horror they imply, but because acknowledging them would require reconsidering the trust they place in the social structure.  This is why so few bother to investigate further.  Once one begins to see the depth of institutional rot and mold, it becomes impossible to return to the comfort of ignorance; yet many people would rather stay in their pretty little cocoons and not be bothered.  Peel me another grape, Daphne.

Is the present moment an actual “awakening?”  That’s hard to say, but even if that is true, it is an uneven one.  Most people struggle to sustain attention in a world engineered for constant distraction.  A new crisis, a new headline, a new spectacle appears, and public focus instantly resets.  The duplicitous news stories change faster than the weather in Chicago.  Faster, faster Pussycat, whip up the chaos!  Whip it up good!   Chaos and confusion, to and fro.

Outrage becomes episodic rather than transformative.  The average citizen does not demand accountability, structural reform, or transparency; instead, they drift back into the familiar rhythms of daily life.  They continue to support the very systems they criticize, through consumption, through compliance, through lazy habits.  In this sense, the problem is not merely institutional corruption but a culture that has grown accustomed to passivity, comfort, and distraction, even in the face of profound moral failure.

The individuals who perpetuate profound harm are not merely “troubled;” they embody a level of moral corruption that defies explanation.  Their actions reveal a conscience that has been systematically eroded, a capacity for empathy that appears extinguished.  Yet, they move through public life with practiced ease— smiling for cameras, delivering speeches, presenting themselves as benefactors, all the while concealing the ethical void that enables their behavior.  This dissonance between public image and private reality is precisely what allows such corruption to persist.

Yet these systems endure not only because of those who exploit them, but because of the collective willingness to look away.  As long as society continues to fund, celebrate, and unquestioningly trust the institutions and figures who benefit from the status quo, little to nothing will ever change.  Evil does not thrive simply because it is powerful; it thrives because good people convince themselves it is safer not to see it.  It’s so easy to play the poor put upon ostrich and bury one’s head in the sand.  The refusal to confront uncomfortable truths becomes, in effect, a form of approval and permission.

Cognitive dissonance is real, but far more often, it’s more of the slow erosion caused by apathy, constant confusion, and the relentless flood of information, outrage, and accusation.  When every voice demands attention and every headline contradicts the last, people slip into a kind of mental fog — not because they’re incapable of thinking, but because they’re exhausted by the effort and they would rather take the easy way.  And in that dazed state, many retreat to what feels familiar.  They worship their idols.  They cling to the idols that reflect their preferred illusions, the figures who reinforce their false beliefs and offer the comfort of never having to question anything at all.

The world is very messed up.

 

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Cousin Eddie.

I once lived in a neighborhood called Arrowroot Ranch where the residents were so clique‑ish that my household and I barely knew anyone beyond a polite wave, if even that!  People kept to their own circles, and newcomers like us remained on the outside looking in.  So, it came as a surprise one morning when my best friend returned from the mailbox with a story that would become our own neighborhood legend.

My best friend said to me one cool June morning that as he stepped outside to collect the mail, he was greeted by a stranger standing in the driveway next door with an oversized coffee mug in his hand.  He was an unshaven man who wore sandals with knee socks, shorts with an elastic band (or were they swimming trunks?), and a faded red bathrobe left wide open that left nothing to the imagination.  The robe flapped in the breeze just enough to reveal a bare, hairy beer‑belly gut spilling over the waistband of his shorts.  It was, to put it mildly, an unexpected sight before lunch.

We eventually learned that this man was the new owner of the house next door.  We nicknamed him “Cousin Eddie,” partly because he reminded us of the madcap trailer-living cousin in those Hollywood “Vacation” movies and partly because the name suited him in a way we couldn’t quite explain.  It was affectionate nomenclature, in its own odd and funny way.

Cousin Eddie had an ever‑changing cast of characters living with him, and they were most likely renters.  Two of them we came to know by nickname alone: “Turban” and “Lady Godiva.”  Turban earned her name honestly; she used to wear a turban every day while sitting on a lawn chair in the driveway, talking loudly on her cell phone as though the entire neighborhood needed to hear her side of the conversation.  Lady Godiva, on the other hand, was waiting for her new house to be built, and she was seen popping in and out of her car she parked at the curb.  Why we called her Lady Godiva is lost to memory, though it probably had something to do with her long hair and her tendency to dress… scantily.

Cousin Eddie himself was a snowbird.  From October to April, he lived next door, and from May through September he returned to the forested backwoods of northern Wisconsin.  Each year he hauled his Harley in the bed of his pickup truck, making the long trek north like a migrating bird with chrome handlebars.

When he was in residence at Arrowroot Ranch, we always knew it.  Almost every morning, he fired up the Harley and roared off, returning only when the sun was low.  If he wasn’t riding, he was making noise of another kind; running a jigsaw, grinding rust off his patio furniture, or operating some screeching electrical tool that echoed down the street to the next cul-de-sac.  I had heard that inside his house, he kept several mounted animal heads, deer, elk, and who knows what else, along with a full‑sized pool table planted right in the middle of his living room.

Turban and Lady Godiva added their own flavor to the daily soundtrack.  Turban’s phone calls could be heard from three houses away, and Lady Godiva drifted in and out like a character from a half‑remembered dream, always on her way to somewhere else and constantly talking to someone if they were within earshot.

Yet when Cousin Eddie packed up and headed back to Wisconsin each spring, the neighborhood changed.  The tools went silent, the Harley’s rumble faded.  Yet, for a while, everything felt calmer— almost too calm, as if the street itself were holding its breath.  Turban’s driveway monologues continued more loudly into the warm air.  One winter Lady Godiva was gone.  Another renter showed up, this time it was a man, and we never really saw him, except when an ambulance was called one morning and he was laying half covered on the gurney.

Every now and then, just after dusk, we’d catch something odd: the faint smell of gasoline drifting from next door through the clump of cacti, or the distant whine of a jigsaw even though no one was outside.  Once, my best friend swore he saw a bathrobe flutter past the mailbox, though no one was outside in the wild stormy wind that heralded an approaching rare thunderstorm.  We told ourselves it was imagination, the leftover noise from a noisy neighbor.

But sometimes, on those quiet nights at Arrowroot Ranch when the crickets paused and the streetlamps flickered on, it felt as though Cousin Eddie hadn’t really left— that he only stepped sideways into some unseen corner of the neighborhood, waiting for October to roll around so he could wander back into view like he’d never been gone at all, where he’d shuffle back into view with his faded bathrobe flapping open and his sandals slapping the pavement like he’d never left.. Even now, years later, there are evenings when the air shifts strangely, and for a split second the street feels off‑kilter, the purple mountains standing sentry in the background, as if waiting for someone to step back into it.  In those moments, I think that I hear the faint slap of sandals on pavement, coming from nowhere in particular, as though Cousin Eddie is still wandering around, looking for a mailbox that isn’t his anymore.

 

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Money and the Shape of Life.

Lately I’ve been returning to and thinking about topics I hadn’t examined in a while, and one of them is money, how it shaped my choices, how it ordered my days, and how quietly it became a measure of my worth without my ever intending it.

There was a long stretch when money and job position sat at the center of my work life.  I was always looking toward the next promotion, the next pay step increase, the bonus, the next annual bump in my grade level, the next cost‑of‑living increase.  Each milestone felt like progress, like proof that I was moving forward and being successful (whatever that was).  And overtime?  I never turned it down.  It was money in my pocket, yes, but it was also work experience to add another line on the résumé, another rung on the ladder of upward mobility in middle management.

And then came the question of retirement.  The more I earned and the higher I climbed, the more secure my future seemed.  I’ve always belonged to the “Waste Not, Want Not” tribe, careful, frugal, planning.  I was planning my retirement since my first full-time job after graduating from school.  It felt responsible to think about the long game, to build a cushion, to prepare for the day when work would no longer be on my daily schedule.

By most measures, I did well in the career jungle.  I worked hard, advanced steadily, and positioned myself for a sensible retirement.  But to what end, really?  Some of what I gained came at the cost of things I didn’t even realize I was losing.  I missed moments that could have enriched my life in ways no paycheck ever could.  My eyes were fixed on the horizon with an early retirement, a new chapter, a better future, while the present quietly slipped by.

Money is necessary, of course, since it keeps the lights on and the pantry stocked.  But it was never meant to be the focus; it sort of turned out that way without me paying close attention.  You see, when it becomes the center, even subtly, it distorts the way we see our days and the way we measure our worth.  Looking back, I can see how easily the pursuit of “enough” becomes the pursuit of “more, more, more!” and how quietly that pursuit can crowd out the very things that make a life well lived.

Would a very fat bank account make my life easier?  I’m sure it would, but to what extent?  Yet in the reality of life, I have just what I need to live.  Much more, and it would be living an unnecessarily extravagant and artificial life.

In the end, money can support a life and our Earthly needs, but it cannot give one satisfactory meaning.  What endures is the virtue we cultivate, the charity we extend, the relationships we tend, and the gratitude we carry for the gifts already placed in our hands.  When we let money take up more space than it deserves, the spiritual cost is subtle but real: our attention drifts, our desires narrow, and our hearts grow less free.  But when we return to gratitude and right order, we remember that a well‑lived life is measured not by how much money we have in the bank, but by what we become.

When we allow money to become our quiet master, the emotional cost is real: our hearts grow divided, we become conceited, our freedom narrows, and we begin to measure ourselves by standards that have nothing to do with building positive relationships or redemption.  Yet when we push away secularism and return to true gratitude, humility, and order, we remember that a life well lived is judged not by earnings or advancement, but by a fidelity to what matters for all of eternity.

 

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Smoke, Scrape, Yell, Repeat.

After writing “The Sheriff of Decibels,” regarding the whole “your TV is too loud” saga with the neighbor who may be had been hearing phantom sounds, I thought I had earned a brief intermission in the neighborhood drama, but then it reminded me of one of the downstairs neighbors I had once, and those thoughts led to me think of a whole different angle.  Life in a condominium is basically a rotating cast of social challenges, and the next act began downstairs.

I lived in a condominium where one of my downstairs neighbors used her balcony like it was her personal broadcasting studio.  Whenever she had company, the visitors were always on the sidewalk below.  Their conversations rose straight up.  I didn’t even have to try to overhear; the dialogue arrived fully formed, projected upward with the confidence of someone who believed the entire building was her audience.  If she ever decided to start a podcast, she wouldn’t need equipment.  She already had the lungs for it.

Another neighbor was forever loud on her cell phone.  One afternoon, I heard her give out her bank account number, a passcode, and the balance.  Wow.

Then there’s the patio furniture.  There is a neighbor who, every time she shifts a chair on her balcony, it sounds like she’s dragging a cast-iron park bench across a stone floor.  I’ve heard less noise from actual construction sites.

There was the cigarette smoke from a cheap brand yet another neighbor probably bought by the truckload.  It drifted upward in slow, dramatic spirals, and somehow it slipped into my condo like it had a key.  One moment I’m enjoying fresh air; the next, my living room and kitchen smelled like a casino buffet circa 1960.  It wasn’t ideal, but I learned to adapt since the odor didn’t last more than a half hour or so.

But here’s the important part: I didn’t complain.  Not ever.  Not a text, not a note, not even a pointed throat-clear over the balcony railing.  Why?  Because this was life in a building full of people.  They talked loudly.  They scraped furniture.  They smoked.  They lived.  And unless someone was hosting a demolition derby in their living room, I tolerated the occasional disturbances.

Besides, after the Sheriff of Decibels dealings, I’ve developed a new appreciation for not becoming That Neighbor.  If I ever feel tempted to pick up the phone and lodge a complaint, I remember how it feels to be scolded for noises that may or may not exist.  It’s an excellent deterrent.

So, I let the balcony monologues rise, let the furniture screech across the concrete, let the cigarette smoke drift out and upward like a weather pattern.  I breathed, I adjusted, I moved on.  Because in the grand, chaotic symphony of condo living, sometimes the most intelligent thing you can do is simply not add your own instrument to the noise.

I just laughed it all off.

 

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The Age of Adonis (Part 3).

Part 3 of 3:  The Middle Distance.

There is a peculiar vantage point one gains simply by living in close proximity to other human beings.  Not close enough to know their secrets, but close enough to witness their habits; their triumphs, their peculiarities, their kindness, their small vanities, their authenticity, and quieter graces.  It is the view from the middle distance, where comedy and clarity often arrive hand‑in‑hand.

From this vantage point, I have watched our neighborhood Adonis swell into his mythic proportions, strutting through the hallways and on the neighborhood sidewalks like a man auditioning for a protein‑powder commercial.  His life is lived in bold, glossy strokes of sweat, swagger, and spectacle.  He found the easy way in life to make a dollar, becoming a grifter front and center on the unholy stage of a community fellowship group, sermonizing under the guise of praises and blessings peppered within his readings of scripture verses found in a distorted Bible.  He is the sort of person who seems to believe that if he flexes hard enough – whether it is flexing by quoting scripture or flexing muscles – the world will mistake it for virtue.  At the same time, he soaks in the adulation and attention as one would with water from the River Jordan.

And then, from the same vantage point, I have watched the quiet ones; the door‑holders, the plant‑waterers, the hallway‑softeners moving through the building with a gentleness that neither asks nor demands anything in return.  Their lives are lived in gentle lowercase letters, steady and unadorned.  They are not trying to be noticed, which is precisely why they are.

Modern life, for all its noise, has a way of revealing character in the smallest of moments.  The man who performs goodness loudly often performs it only for the applause and attention.  The man who waters the begonias when no one is looking is not performing at all.  He is simply and unobtrusively being who he is.

Discernment, I’ve learned, is not about judging people harshly.  It’s about seeing clearly and recognizing the difference between shine and substance, between the man who builds his body like an Old Testament golden monument and the neighbor who quietly builds a life of decency.  Humility, too, is not a grand gesture.  It is the quiet refusal to make oneself the center of every hallway and fellowship stage.  To learn what not to become is one of the great lessons of life.

And what about the comedy of modernity?  It’s everywhere.  It’s in the man who cannot lower his arms because his torso has become a personal billboard.  It’s in the fluorescent lights catching a thousand sequins on Cowgirl Betty’s jacket in the middle of a sunny day.  It’s in the way we all, at one point or another, take ourselves far too seriously.

But the deeper comedy is the one that makes you smile long after the moment has passed.  It is this: the people who most want to be admired rarely are, and the people who never think about admiration often end up holding the whole place together.

In the middle distance, the truth becomes clear.  Strength is not measured in inches of bicep or the girth of one’s chest.  Beauty is not measured in lumens of sparkle.  Virtue, the real kind, is almost always quiet enough to miss if you’re not paying attention.

But once you see it, you start noticing it everywhere.

This is the final chapter of three parts.

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The Age of Adonis (Part 2)

Part 2 of 3:  The Quiet Virtues

Not long after watching the rise of our neighborhood Adonis — the sweat, the swagger, the ever‑expanding circumference of his upper body — I began noticing something else in the building.  Something smaller, quieter, and far easier to overlook.

It started with the older gentleman on the fifth floor, the one who always carries a canvas tote bag and walks with a slight shuffle.  I once saw him pause in the lobby to hold the door for a mother wrangling a stroller and two grocery bags.  He didn’t say much. He just nodded, smiled, and waited until she was safely inside.  No flexing.  No performance.  Just a simple act of courtesy that didn’t require an audience.

Then there’s the woman down the hall who leaves small seasonal decorations on her door.  They aren’t elaborate, just a tiny flowery wreath or a quilted, hanging pumpkin door decoration.  She never announces them, never tries to impress anyone.  But somehow those little touches soften the whole hallway, as if she’s quietly reminding the rest of us that beauty doesn’t have to shout.

And of course, there’s the retired engineer who waters the courtyard plants when no one else remembers.  He doesn’t make speeches about community or stewardship.  He simply notices what needs doing and does it, his hands moving with the calm competence of someone who has spent a lifetime tending to things that grow slowly.

None of these people would ever call themselves virtuous.  They would laugh at the idea.  They are simply living their lives with a kind of unselfconscious decency that doesn’t demand or look for applause.

It struck me one afternoon, watching the engineer mist the begonias while Adonis strutted past, that quiet virtues are the ones that actually hold a place together.  Not the loud displays of strength or the curated personas, but the small, steady acts that ask for nothing in return.

The world has always had its Adonises; men who sculpt themselves into monuments and then wonder why no one bows.  But the world has also always had its quiet souls, the ones who keep the doors open, the plants alive, the hallways gentle.

And if I’m honest, it’s the quiet ones who make a neighborhood livable.  They are the ballast, the steadying weight, the reminder that goodness doesn’t need to be dramatic nor a showboat to be real.

In a culture obsessed with spectacle, the quiet virtues are almost radical these days.  They whisper instead of shout.  They build instead of pose.  They endure long after the muscles deflate and the spotlight moves on.

And perhaps that is the real miracle: that in a world full of noise, the softest lives are often the ones that speak the truth most clearly.

Part 3 will be published on April 18, 2026.

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The Age of Adonis (Part 1)

Part 1 of 3:  Reflections on Vanity, Virtue, and the Modern Parade

He was the sort of man who made a living preaching The Word while somehow managing to sidestep most of its demands.  You could see it in the way he carried himself; earnest on the surface, but with a hollowness underneath, like a sermon missing its last page.

When I first met him, he was almost aggressively unremarkable: small, soft around the middle, a crew cut that looked like it had been administered by someone in a hurry, and some type of cologne that would gag a maggot.  He told me he had left the Church and was now preaching at a non‑denominational fellowship down the road.  He quoted Scripture with the enthusiasm of someone who had just discovered the footnotes and wanted everyone to know and be impressed.  Truthfully, it felt less like devotion and more like a performance of mental gymnastics meant to impress.  They didn’t.

In our brief conversations, he mentioned he was a former drug user, now clean, and that he was “still learning” and had “a long way to go” in understanding The Word.  That part, at least, I believed.

But then something shifted.

Slowly, his upper body began to expand.  It was first subtly, then alarmingly.  I would see him at the neighborhood gym, or returning from it, sweat pouring off him in rivulets that perfumed the condominium hallways with a scent that could only be described as fusty.  Other days, I’d spot him leaving Atomic Health Club in town, towels slung over his shoulder, his wet T‑shirt clinging to him like a second skin.  He would leap into his sports car with the flourish of a man starring in his own music video and drive off like a bolt out of the blue.

By summer, the transformation seemed complete.  One afternoon, he and his family walked down the hallway on their way to the swimming pool. “Walked” is generous—he lumbered, unable to lower his arms fully because his torso had grown to mythic proportions.  He wore only baggy shorts (I cannot call them trunks), his thick thighs rubbing together and his calves looking like chicken legs.  It looked like it hurt him to move his legs, and for that moment I felt sorry for him.  His pre‑tween daughter wore a bikini so revealing it made me blink twice in embarrassment.  His wife and son, ironically, were dressed modestly befitting a church picnic.

His upper body had become enormous, his thighs still pronounced, his calves still comically thin.  He reminded me of a Greek statue carved by an artist who ran out of marble halfway through.  It was unsettling, the kind of physique that makes you instinctively step aside in case it topples or explodes.

He strutted through the building with the air of a man fishing for admiration, or perhaps for something more.  Someone once told me that people who leave one addiction often find another to replace the high.  Maybe this was that; maybe it wasn’t.  I’m not his confessor; I can only pray for him.

What I do know is this: the greater his muscles grew, the quieter his preaching rang.  There was a disconnect between the man he proclaimed himself to be and the man he was becoming, between the humility of the Gospel and the vanity of the mirror.

And perhaps that is the real caution of the Age of Adonis: when the body becomes the altar, the soul is left without a place to kneel and worship the one true God.

Part 2 will be published on April 16, 2026.

 

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Illusion and Theater.

I try, as a matter of personal discipline, not to immerse myself in the daily torrent of headlines.  The modern news cycle is a relentless machine—loud, urgent, and yet, it’s strangely empty.  Nevertheless, every so often, despite my best intentions, a headline catches my eye, and I allow myself to get sucked in.  It pulls me in, not because I trust it, but because I’m curious about what new Oscar-worthy performance is unfolding on the world’s stage.

What I notice, repeatedly, is that what passes for “news” rarely resembles anything real.  It feels crafted, curated, sculpted, and arranged with theatrical precision.  The stories are presented as truth, but the tone is too polished, the timing too convenient, the narrative too tidy.  It’s as though we’re being handed a script rather than a window into reality.

And beneath that obvious script lies a deeper question: What is actually happening behind the scenes?

To explore that question, we must look at the four forces shaping our perception: illusion, distraction, power, and the quiet, stubborn search for truth.

I. Illusion is the first layer—the iridescent surface that makes everything appear coherent and trustworthy. We grow up believing that the world is presented to us honestly. School textbooks, official statements, historical accounts— they all arrive with the authority of certitude.  We memorize dates, names, and events as though they are fixed points in time and that’s all that matters.

But the passing of years and paying close attention has a way of peeling back the veneer.  The more we learn, the more we realize how much of our education was simplified, sanitized, or strategically framed.  History is not a neutral record; it is a purposely fashioned narrative.  Once you recognize that, the illusion begins to crack.

The news, too, operates on illusion.  It offers the appearance of transparency while carefully shaping what we see and how we interpret it.  The lighting is perfect, the talking points rehearsed, the outrage calibrated just so.  It is a performance designed to feel spontaneous and honest.

Illusion is powerful because it is comforting.  It gives us the sense that the world is orderly, that someone is in control, that events follow a predictable script.  But comfort is not the same as truth.

II. Distraction is the orchestra, if illusion is the stagecraft. The modern world is engineered for distraction. Headlines flash, notifications ping, commentary multiplies.  Every story is framed as urgent, every disagreement amplified, every trivial event inflated into a crisis.  We, as the audience, are encouraged to react, not reflect.  Distraction keeps us busy.  It keeps us emotional.  It keeps us from asking deeper questions.  It’s not that the stories are always false; it’s that they are strategically incomplete.  They direct our attention toward the sensational and away from the structural.  They keep us fixated on personalities instead of systems, scandals instead of patterns, noise instead of meaning.

Distraction is not accidental.  It is a tool of control.  A distracted public is a manageable public—too overwhelmed to notice what truly matters.

III. Behind illusion and distraction lies the engine that drives them: power.  Power prefers the shadows.  It prefers complexity, secrecy, and silence.  It prefers a public that is too divided, too exhausted, or too entertained to scrutinize its actions.

The real story of any era is not the headlines; it is the decisions made quietly, behind closed doors, by people whose names we rarely hear.  The world is shaped not by the performances we watch, but by the negotiations, alliances, and calculations that happen backstage.

We were taught in our schools that power is straightforward: governments govern, leaders lead, institutions protect the public good.  But the older we get, the more we see how naïve it was believing those views.  Power is rarely transparent.  It is rarely benevolent.  And it is almost never accountable unless it’s forced to be.

Subsequently, we are left with the unsettling question: What are the kings doing—and what are they hiding?  The answer is not handed to us, so we must seek it ourselves.

IV. Truth becomes a personal responsibility in a world of illusion, distraction, and hidden power.  Truth must be pursued.  It requires discernment, patience, and a willingness to question the narratives we were raised to accept.  It requires stepping back from the clamor long enough to see the patterns beneath it.  It requires humility; the recognition that certainty is often a trap.

But the search for truth is also liberating.  When illusion cracks, clarity emerges.  When distraction loses its grip, attention sharpens.  When power is questioned, accountability becomes possible.  And perhaps this is the quiet rebellion available to each of us: to stop being extras in someone else’s production and instead become vocal observers; aware and unwilling to be fooled.

All the world is a stage… but we do not have to play the part we are assigned.

 

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Sequins at Noon – Cowgirl Betty and Cap’n America.

There are times when you go to the grocery store simply to buy milk and lettuce, and instead you are confronted with something so visually arresting that you abandon all thoughts of produce and stand there wondering about the human condition.  This happened to us last month.

We were rolling our cart down the main aisle, minding our own business, when we both spotted a couple ahead of us, although “spotted” is too mild a word.  They were impossible to miss.

He was a large man wearing an equally large T‑shirt, the entirety of it was an American flag from collar to hem.  A full‑scale, Fourth‑of‑July‑parade, fireworks-at-dusk-kind-of-flag; the kind of shirt that announces itself before the wearer even turns the corner.

She, by contrast, was petite, but her outfit more than made up the difference.  She wore bright white ankle‑high cowgirl boots, a white mini‑skirt, and a white-and-silver sequined fringed jacket that shimmered like a disco ball on a pilgrimage.  To complete the ensemble, she had a small white cowboy hat perched on her bottle blonde head, as if she were on her way to a rhinestone‑themed rodeo or perhaps starring in a country‑western musical set inside a snow globe.

I might have missed the details if it weren’t for the millions of silver sequins on her jacket, each one catching the store’s fluorescent lights and sending them ricocheting across the checkout lane.  It was less an outfit and more a celestial event.

We kept on walking, passing by them and taking a moment to appreciate the cartoonish artistry.  There is something admirable about people who dress as if the grocery store is their stage and the aisles their runway.

As we continued walking towards the dairy section, I found myself wondering where they were headed next.  A line dancing competition?  A patriotic photo shoot?  A themed anniversary dinner?  Or perhaps this was simply their Tuesday attire, because why shouldn’t one buy canned tomatoes while dressed like a country star and her personal flag-waving display?

The world is full of mysteries, but few shine quite so brightly under fluorescent lighting.  This was fun to have experienced!

 

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