Sonnets In Questions?

My 15 and 3/4 years old son is a sophomore in high school and his literature class (what we called "English" in my day) is studying Julius Caesar. Recently, one of his assignments was to write a sonnet. Of course, he was going to wait until the night before. Did I mention how old he is? I told him he could not write a quality sonnet in such a short time. Then I realized he had no concerns regarding quality. I decided to write a sonnet and share it with him. First I had to read "Sonnets for Dummies" in order to know how to write a sonnet. Then I needed to place the rhyming scheme required on the page so I would be following all the rules. It took me about 5 hours to write my sonnet. My son wrote his in 10 minutes. He would never allow me to share his work, but I thought mine came out okay and here it is.

Soulful sounds sing out from his black guitar.

His homework lays untouched beneath his bed.

Escaping notes rise to a falling star.

A sonnet slowly forming in his head

Magically music takes form in words

Parents pray he will complete it on time

Accompaniment provided by birds

The difficult thing is to work in rhyme.

The answer must be a video game.

Call of Duty starring William Shakespeare?

Associate violence with his name?

After all he’s the man who wrote King Lear!

Will the sonnet be done on time or late?

Are these questions of desire or of fate?

Decisions, Decisions, Decisions....

It all boils down to one thing:

Making the Decision.

Let me rephrase that:

MAKING THE DECISIONS!

It does not matter what it is:

Becoming Thinner aka dieting.

Getting a New Job.

Writing a Novel.

Being Nicer.

Getting in Shape.

Staying Married.

Getting Divorced.

Reading a Book.

Having an affair.

Everything except who you love. Let's face it some people are just totally lovable and some people are not. Some people will get on your nerves no matter what they do or say. There is nothing you can do about it. You cannot force yourself to like someone you find unlikable. The solution to that problem is to just let someone else love them. This acceptance of your own limitations as well as theirs seems to be the only viable answer. After all each one of us is THAT person for someone else. Yet, most of us manage to find individuals and groups where we are welcomed, appreciated, and loved. However, what happens if a particular "group" grows into a political party. Which I believe is what has happened in our current society. No matter what the Democrats say or do, the Republicans "cannot stand" them and visa versa. The idea of being in a work place/country where we all have to get along for the greater good is becoming more and more difficult since we cannot "decide" to just get on with it and get along.

As hard as I tried, I cannot and will not ever appreciate George W. Bush. And on the other side of the fence is a large group that will never ever appreciate Bill Clinton. So where does that leave "our company of the United States of America?" Some of us will decide to cheat (on our taxes or our spouses), some of us will decide to stick it out for the sake of the children, some of us will decide to burn off the energy created by all this animosity by exercising, or avoiding the newspapers and focusing on reality shows. A whole a bunch of decisions, some good, some bad and all because there is one thing we cannot decide to do, tolerate our diversity. I do not mean our racial or ethnic diversity. I mean our moral and emotional diversities.

Perhaps the polarization we see in our political lives is this one element of human nature magnified, and multiplied. Now it is metastatic and no one is looking for a cure. Can we, liberals and conservatives, make a joint decision to at least look for a cure?