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Do you want that safely plain, racially frosted or chocolate or sprinkled progressively? I have a low opine of the usual food-product donut consumed for its short term non-nutritional kick. On store shelves 50 years ago or as found today in today’s approximated coffee shops, the thing with a hole at its heart has stayed doughily the same. For all the ill I could say, I need recognize generations of product consistency. Who needs food value when satisfaction is sought?  

I’m not sure whether to make of the commerce rated donut an analogy or metaphor. Depends on how we see that hole at the central core. Those of you who’ve read with me these decades may be preparing for an accustomed awful leap. Rather than disappoint, I’ll spring (just around the corner after all) forward. Not wanting to meddle much with the deviltry of religion, I don’t see a way to avoid what may sound a preachy concern, not about immortal souls (none of your affair how rotten mine is), but perhaps the everlasting spirit could for a while be considered as more than a hole (think cake hole if you wish) gaping wide with desirous need to be fill-ed up. Yum, bliss on the lips.  

Owning my share of urges past and present, I’m not critical of wanting. Want is a driver, whether we want another buzz, a beer, martini or dough ball versus Brussel’s Sprout (awful good English whether wanted or naught t’ go with the donut). Wanting is a creative pusher, but also a deceiver by reinforcing a shorter range of vision. Many times in life I’ve instinctively done what’s harmful or counter, so I’m no practical help other than to suggest there problem with wanting some things means the avoidance of others. One thing we clever naked primates bungle very well is acting wisely. Have doubt? How many times you’ve met a Buddha.

An uncommon thing, wisdom is, and easily mocked by the raucous.   Does seem at times the donut of happy progress, iced and for greater appeal, retains its central hole, in some cases the hole going unnoticed even when the hole overtakes the deep fried doughy outside. Whenever selecting or being served a donut there is going to be a hole, if not the thing would be a cupcake, a different slant entirely. Since unforeseen complications (part of the hole) or side effects, etc. can’t be eliminated the best thing, seems to me, is acknowledging the useful need for second/other opinions.

Why? It’s simple. None of us, no matter how brilliant or certain of ourselves, holds all knowledge and has complete mastery. (As signal evidence of that, see claims bolstering universal acceptance, such as 9 out of 10 agree, etc.) The unforeseen and/or overlooked because they are unforeseen or have been overlooked. That is neither blame nor fault finding rather than a basic recognition that even excellent plans have a potential for troubles ranging from small to going right over the cliff. I

f you’ve ever negotiated or tried to “sell” a proposal you likely realize the role of overselling or of going to the max. The hype needed to sell is not a good model for management of programs, projects or problems. More than once I’ve been part of a plan that went awry when something came out of the blue. When laying out plans for 2020 who knew travel, lockdowns and etc. would shut down entire borders? Want to go fishing in Kenora? Nope, couldn’t risk that on the chance an invisible (making detection all but impossible and fear of it all the greater) virus might have leap-frogged from bats and pangolins to walleye. Did you see the extremely unlikely loom bigger and larger on the horizon?  

Aside from never being able to have all the knowledge needed or an ability to crystal ball future events there are other dynamics involved. Aren’t there? The way things are often approached from populist, assumed science, prophetic stances, etc. it isn’t all that easy to tell what makes the doughy basis versus frosting and sprinkles or hole.

You and I can be forgiven for seeing the fat and sugar packed donut as a healthy food energy source when it and its hole are sold and packaged as organic gluten free sustainable answer to a problem we didn’t know we had until marketing alerted us to a needy reality. Maybe (not entirely implausible) we are meant and intended to be bewildered in order to be better bullied into accepting the sales pitch as a real deal. Recall not so far away or long ago when a phone call involving a Ukrainian leader was seen as so corrupt and compromising as to justify investigation and impeachment? Deep breath now. Same arguably corrupted government and same leader now lionized while being promised aid and support all the way to Zion. First one view is sold. Then another. People often get annoyed with me for saying what I think is clear.

Putin and Zelinski are equally autocratic leaders of socialist states, one of which carries its reparation claim back a thousand years. The people of both nations deserve better, but how on earth does anyone go about trying to satisfactorily untangle hundreds of years of historic concern?   

How? My notion is “not my concern” and “don’t bother” with reparative historic justice any more than I’d consider trying to shift the sands of a desert with a pewter tea spoon. Sometimes, as maybe this time, the hole far exceeds the donut. Take reparation.

Approx. 9 of 10 Africans brought to the new world went to Central and South America by Dutch, Spanish, Portuguese and French. African kingdoms and Arab traders had important roles, too. How does the US inherit debts from Spain or Belgium? The prospect of payments to ancestors of slaves has more or less appeal (perhaps) depending on whether you’re credit or debit. But then, let’s say you are awarded hundreds of millions and never have to work again. Is that good or is it confirmation you’ve nothing a value to contribute on your own?