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By Doug Collins

One Man's Opinion

COLLINS: The Merry-Go-Round of life is spinning rapidly

Apr 28, 2023 | 5:00 AM

I THINK IF WE TOOK all the hot air being generated by people discussing solutions to our problems, we would be able to provide heat for the world without having to extract anything more from the earth.

So much talk and so little action. And what actions we do take, seem to be panic-produced and mostly ineffective.

All levels of government are trying to figure out how to deal with the homeless, the opioid problem, safe injection sites, affordable housing, the high cost of living, fair wages, and so on and so on. We’re so overloaded with problems, we have no idea where to start in terms of solutions.

We don’t want people to take bad drugs, so we agree to safe injection sites. Addicts can get high safely, and then we let them back into the streets. We try to get them to agree to treatment when maybe we should be forcing them to have treatment.

We argue whether or not we should legislate against using drugs in our parks. And yet we don’t allow smoking in the parks. Ironic, isn’t it?

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We provide shelter for the homeless, but don’t provide help for the middle class just above the poverty level, who are left to fend on their own. Seniors continue to be left out of most of this discussion. They are the forgotten ones.

Most people can’t afford the rising cost of food, so they choose less healthy options. All of these higher costs impact small businesses operating in service industries forced to charge more to keep their own heads above water.

And our solutions seem to lead to more and more discussion about the problem, with no identifiable solutions. They are not easy problems to solve, but you cannot continue to discuss them without doing anything. And frankly, I am not convinced we can do much more than throw a little money at the problem.

Every time I see another headline I think of Joni Mitchell’s Circle Game, a song that was written to point out that life was a series of circles. Many of the lyrics, however, can be adapted to fit our current crises. Joni wrote this song back in 1966, and I think to myself “I wonder if this talented songwriter saw the prophetic nature of the chorus when she wrote it well over 50 years ago….

“And the seasons, they go round and round
And the painted ponies go up and down
We’re captive on the carousel of time
We can’t return, we can only look
Behind, from where we came
And go round and round and round, in the circle game”

-from The Circle Game written by Joni Mitchell

I’m Doug Collins and that’s One Man’s Opinion.

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Editor’s Note: This opinion piece reflects the views of its author, and does not necessarily represent the views of CFJC Today or Pattison Media.