Who Dad?!

What About You?

I think we would not survive a single moment more if we truly felt all of the insanity, cruelty, injustice, stupidity, and senseless destruction happening around us. There has been so much of it. And yet, good and surprising news continues to filter in from all around.

Most gratifying are all the retired people with unique and essential expertise coming back as volunteers to keep society functioning. People everywhere are attempting to solve various problems, put down myriad uprisings, repair, replace, and mend what can be mended.

We are not wired to be preemptive, but when something truly terrible was not only on the horizon, but happening everywhere, the majority responded. A cultivated but dormant instinct to do better has been emerging. Networks of cooperation are being formed around the world. Trade and aid enterprises, rather than profit driven ones, are reshaping economies.

Manufacturing may never come back as it was, but people are adapting, becoming more resourceful, utilizing and repurposing what already exists. We have to figure out what to do with our own garbage. And, gasoline is an issue, but there is less reason to drive. Electric vehicles rule, but neighbors are sharing them. And people are sharing from their gardens, raising chickens for eggs, rabbits for meat, and learning how to prepare insects for consumption. Schools are becoming gathering grounds for sharing what is being learned and trading what is being produced.

It is not paradise, yet. It's still chaotic. Prisons have emptied. Piracy and bands of tribal thugs, separated by race, persist, but there are no easy pickings for them. Everyone everywhere is heavily armed. And, most who have deserted from military service and police forces have joined with the neighborhood communities, not the gangs.

It was the question mark that did it. Months passed with people speculating on why distant galaxies merging would look exactly like a question mark. It started all kinds of questioning. The consensus became that a power greater than ourselves was whispering, wondering, yelling at us: "WTF?! Really?! What are you doing there? Why are you destroying yourselves and your jewel of a planet?"

The entertainment industry has not come back, but street bands and poets can be found just about anywhere, singing and reciting questions. Asking each other and ourselves questions —and discussing without arguing — has become more and more commonplace.

What about you? What do you strive for? Not your long range vision for yourself, but in each day? Is it a consistent, circumstantial, or random goal?

Is it more about what gets scratched off your list or how you feel in the doing? Seriously, what do you quietly aim for? Order? Balance? Chaos?

Must you dangle treats or naps, some private rewards, to get yourself through your day? Is a good day one where you feel connected? Acknowledged? Do you seek approval or recognition? Or, anonymity? Maybe it's about survival? Or, to make one thing better? Perhaps to just not screw anything up?

Do you count how many steps you take? What about calories consumed and burned? Is it more important for you to speed up or to slow down? Do you prefer to have a plan or be surprised? Are your thoughts far away from the task in front of you? If so, do you call them back, or let them fly?

Have you found a way to embrace the ten thousand things a day demands? Prefer to stay busy? Or, do you strive for those moments where you can finally collapse and sigh? I do. I need a pocket or two of nothing in my day. I find being alive both exhilarating and exhausting.

Empty time, like bubble wrap, cushions and insulates me from life's chores and expectations, grants me the illusion of being both the dreamer and the dreamed.

My question, for myself this morning was what am I being called to do today? My life was almost comfortable, but I was still afraid. Aware of being a microscopic part of an immense procession in an unimaginable creation, I can take comfort in my insignificance, inching, along with others, towards an uncertain future.