My conservative Jewish husband would have loved the ham I made for Christmas. Tongue in cheek, laugh now. Yes, he would’ve. And my second batch of potato pancakes were a hit. Not bad for a shiksa — along with my apple pie, and dare say the cinnamon buns I made on December 23rd, that my youngest hadn’t dove into, but I had. Woofing down a quarter of the batch and freezing the rest; however, my Norwegian Breads… ehhhhhhh not so much. Albeit this is our sixth holiday season without him. I did our eight nights of Hanukkah solo as one child now lives and works thousands of miles away and the other one is now on college break spending most hours with the friends in town that she enjoys, as she doesn’t get to spend time with them when away at college with her studies.
Too, our happy hopping pets have all passed. Yeah, that was my 2025, as two of our three pets passed in 2025 three months apart. One unexpectedly. It was crazy indeed.
Seven people I knew having had medical emergencies between mid-August and Mid-November this year. Most totally out of the blue. And a death in the family in the middle of it as well.
Some years can feel like failures. Yet, they can also be a look into an evolution of a person, a group of people, a country or the world. I’m implying about how people treat one another. What has the world shown us in 2025? What has our country and its leadership shown us? What have strangers shown us? What of our colleagues, managers and so forth shown us? What have our families shown us? What of our neighbors? What of our friends?
The people in our country have shown us that about 36.4% couldn’t be bothered about the leadership of the country or the rest of the goings on in the world, much less equal rights. Over 32% are bigoted or greedy or busy blaming others for their misfortunes. About 31% want to give some change towards progress a chance. So, the feeling I’ve received from the people in our country is that most people are morons. Yes. I arrived at this conclusion in the last few weeks of 2025.
The first time I heard the line, “Most people are morons.” It was a sunny Thursday afternoon at ten after one in July 2009. I’d been training with a law enforcement official in a fight gym. The gym was light that afternoon. At the end of training, the officer and I had stepped out of the cage’s fencing to put our footwear on. Our coach squatted with his back against the caged fenced in area on the matted floors of the gym.
The officer shook his head as he’d told a story that had happened at quarter to two that morning, when he pulled over a couple with his unmarked car. He, a low-key guy, honest as the day is long and a man of very few words. He then told his story. When he’d finished the story of what happened in the wee hours of the morning, I asked, “Why did they do that?!” I was in disbelief, for he was giving them an ‘out’ to not receive a ticket or worse to bring charges due to the driver’s violation of the law. His response to my query was, “Most people are morons.” I respected him then as I had and still do. That line “Most people are morons.” It lingered in my mind nearly every day since then. I didn’t want to believe it was the truth. It could be that as much crime, disease and so forth I’d experienced, witnessed and knew of. Personally, I still have held out hope that we humans were better than what I’d experienced. Oh, I’ve been accused of being a fatalist by acquaintances in the medical field. Yet, others have seen my ‘glass is half-full’ optimism, under what have appeared the direst of circumstances. Still others have commented on my being too real. It depends on who you are, what’s occurring in your life, the world, the country and where we are standing at a particular moment.
Three weeks ago, as hopeful as I’ve tried to remain for humanity I’d announced alone in my kitchen, to God. “I guess most people are morons.” I arrived at those words witnessing choices of those who are financially my equal or better off than I. I shook my head. People who are of all different ages. Basically, they’re just unwilling to change. I know it’s difficult to start something new and stick with it to get to a better place in one’s health. Yet most people realize that not making the necessary changes to their diet, their exercise or lack thereof, and their ego will not be challenged by their families, by their friends, by their doctors or by society enough to make those changes to improve their lives.
Sometimes I call it the “Magic Pill Syndrome”. You know better, yet you are unwilling to go for therapy to find out why you refuse to make those changes. And I know, it would be looked down upon for me to bring it up at any time. No time is a good time. Any subject matter of improvement for themselves, the idea is often ignored. That is blatant arrogance.
On the other hand, I have had friends over the past year make changes that I never thought they would. I’ve had friends who actually addressed their issues privately with me on how they’d like to improve their health or any other circumstances. Upon hearing this my soul leaps for joy for them. Because I know one thing is that 50% of change is the acknowledgement of knowing there’s a need for change. So, my optimism makes me leap in hopes that the other 50% of their change will eventually arrive and they’ll play the interactive game of life instead of being a spectator of life.
The possibility of their change will have a ripple effect. We never know who will be effected neither how far will that effect travel. Yet, there’s hope. And where there’s an open door for positive change, then anything positive is possible. When people begin to care about their health and circumstances enough to forge ahead privately to better themselves, then there is no blaming. And when there is no blaming, we as a people can heal from the strained irregular concepts that seem as an uncomfortable progressive evolution within our own country to a more equal unity among all regardless of any ethnicity, culture, gender, age, race, financial status or religion or the lack there of. — -Jody-Lynn Reicher
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