The Day The World Almost Came To An
End....And Still Might...But Doesn't Have To
As
raging winds of a massive storm that is currently sweeping across a
great part of the United States howl outside my window shortly after
the solstice earlier at 6:10 AM Eastern, the time that people believe
the ancient Mayans predicted the world to come to an end, three hours
before 20 children and 6 adults are remembered in a “sacred”
moment commemorating a moment that was anything but sacred one week
ago, it is clear that something in our world is way out of whack and
that maybe there is something to this prediction that eludes literal
interpretation yet stands up to meaningful reflection. That the
symptoms of climate change are real is something no one, especially
anyone over 20, such as myself, who remembers very different weather
patterns in my earlier life, can deny, whether or not they attribute
it to something external to the causes humans have made or directly
related to them. That more children are killing other children, as
well as themselves, is a fact that is a glaring reality. That our
system of government has debilitated to the point of, practically
speaking, falling apart altogether, as the very ideologically divided
members of it seem unable to work out a deal to avoid the “fiscal
cliff” is another undeniable reality, whether you attribute it to
the enormity of the size of the money pouring into the people who get
elected to its offices long before they actually get elected, or to
the size of the government itself.
If
any reality has made itself screamingly apparent on this day,
December 21, 2012, it is that out entire planet is terribly
unbalanced in a way that goes deeper and larger than any of these
individual phenomena. Any thinking person cannot help but question
the thinking that led our civilization to this point we're at now and
wonder if indeed we are, if not having created, taking part
helplessly in our own demise. For every disease that we've
eradicated, a new one has taken its place. The hardships of survival
on the plains of life before oil, gas, steam and electricity have
been replaced by the hardships of survival in the dizzying fast paced
life job-killing automation, split-second news cycles and a social
environment that is enslaved to a technological forum we barely
comprehend. It does indeed
seem as though we've gotten nowhere and that our progress has really
been circular, leading us right back to where we started from,
or—worse—off the edge of that looming cliff of no return.
I
think it is entirely possible that the world may be coming to an end
and that today can perhaps be said to be the day all the factors that
have already been happening have led it to the point of no return, or
at least the day we've epiphanically become aware of that fact.
However, I also believe we really don't know if it's the end, a new
beginning, or simply a turning point, this day that is already an
annual turning point when winter begins, the roughest season, yet the
day starts to get longer, the day, as put by an author for the PBS
series nature, “when the light has won over the darkness”. Or,
as another person once said, because it is we ourselves who have
created the mess, we therefore have the power to fix it. Yes, it is
true that it is easier for us to destroy than to create, to make war
than to make peace. But that does not make it impossible.
We
have always been an experimenter. We've tried different ways to make
our lives better. That is the better part of us. But we've forgotten
that there is a worse part of our makeup too, and that worse part is
the part that makes us forget about itself. Hubrically, we pride
ourselves on our accomplishments—great accomplishments indeed—while
losing the humility to remember that they are but works in progress.
The founders of the United States said, “In order to form a more
perfect union...”, in the preamble to our Constitution. They
understood that perfection is an illusion and that we can only become
more perfect than we were yesterday and hopefully reflect on the new
progress we've made, tweak that and search for an even better, more
perfect way to unite and accomplish something great. Perhaps we're
brought back full round in circle when we lose both our perspective
and our humility.
Therefore
I think the solution is not in going back to the way we did things
before nor in just keeping on doing things the way we are now. We
need to both respect the wisdom of our elders, our forbears while
priding ourselves on the achievements of our own generation, but
mostly to work together with our children to find the balance we've
so desperately lost, not avoiding them and thereby leaving them to
copy our own shortsightedness and go down that slippery maze from
which they may or may not find the way out, but to unite. The
preamble to our Constitution contains the word “union” after the
word “more perfect”. We need to come together with a new
understanding of what the word “union” really means. We have
become afraid of losing ourselves and our freedom in uniting,
something that has been the bedrock of our progress in the past. But
“union” does not mean the merging of different people into one
homogenous, unitary group of individuals, but instead a dynamic
association of people, each with his or her own distinct nature and
personality, all bringing something to the group effort to move our
species and our planet forward along a plane of new understanding. I
think more than ever now is the time when the happiness of each of us
is dependent on the ability of all of us to work together instead of
at cross-purposes with each other in order to solve the problems that
confront us and, through our association, naturally come to feel that
we are important, we mean something to each other and that having is
far less important than sharing, the essential ingredient of love,
and that therefore, we also have the ability to share with and be
responsible for our planet and all life on it, not merely for their
but for all of our sustained growth and living, and that we can
reverse this maddening course we have been setting ourselves on by
thinking only of what we can get from it as we draw heavy upon its
offerings while returning nothing back, but instead can offer back by
living lightly and with a smile.
Most
of all, what is needed is the restoration of optimism, the belief
that nothing is too hard or too impossible for us to overcome.
Unfortunately, while toward the end of the 19th
century, it seemed that America abounded with people who thought that
nothing was unachievable, nowadays, the voices of people resound with
hopelessness, with the ironclad belief that the good things “will
never happen” and that we really are way beyond the point of no
return. This majority of people really believe they have no power and
have resigned themselves to it. It is heart-wrenching to know that
200 years ago, people who had far less political power than these
Americans do today, believed
they had more and actually did something to change their reality,
while those today contribute to worsening the problem by believing
they can do nothing and therefore doing nothing. So if you want to
know where your worst enemy is and where to start helping this world
turn around, look no further. It is within you that the answer and
the solution lies. So let's start now. “Il nous faut cultiver notre
jardin”.
