from internet, source unknown

Odd word, oversight; and today’s WordPress Daily Prompt. It’s one of those words with two meanings that are antithetical to one another. Meaning on the one hand, to watch over, be responsible for; and on the other, having ignored, neglected, forgotten.

How can one small word hold such a world of difference within the same space of letters? As I was pondering this paradox, it hit me. Hard. That in fact, one of the scariest things in life is when the two come together. As when a person or institution has, let’s say, legal oversight (responsibility for) the well-being of a person or group – and fails them. Just ignores their welfare.

Like selecting, for agencies with a clear mandate to protect and safeguard the environment or educate the nation’s young, ‘leaders’  with an equally clear intention to destroy that mission? Or promising to take care of everyone, especially the struggling worker; and then without missing a beat, deleting a mortgage allowance that means the difference of home ownership to many of the same; or pulling the healthcare rug out from under most of them? It goes on.

I may be slow, but this is hitting hard and fast. Truth, integrity, transparency … These are values I hold dear, and ones that received a lot of national attention over the past several months. Where did they go? It seems we need real oversight in our highest offices before the rest of us become, well, a mere oversight.