I Don’t Know What’s Going to Happen and That Scares the Shit out of Me
Feeling into this historic moment and why love is the only answer worth giving
Feeling into this historic moment and why love is the only answer worth giving
What happens next? I don’t know, you don’t know, nobody human knows. That’s one of the scariest aspects of being human.
Apparently, it’s also one of the reasons aliens, also referred to as non-human intelligences (NHIs), feel jealous of us. At least that’s what I read in an amazing book by Whitley Strieber. Apparently, some of these NHIs experience time differently, so they know what the future will bring. No, I can’t really make sense of that, but according to Strieber, this is one of the reasons some of these NHIs seek communion with us. They want to possibly have this experience of not knowing.
I wonder if you may be like me and you’d like to trade places with them? Wouldn’t it be nice to know if our species is going to survive our latest and possibly greatest threat to our continued existence? Wouldn’t you like to know that what’s going on in our world isn’t going to lead to our annihilation?
Be careful: What if you found out that’s precisely what is going to happen? What if you knew the end date? But knowing this, you couldn’t do anything to stop it. Do you really want to live with that?
Maybe you do. It would certainly change how I would choose to live my life if I knew the end.
I think most of us have heard that a good practice is to live as though every day is one’s last. That doing so increases one’s gratitude for the little things. If you’ve watched the movie “Don’t Look Up”, perhaps you can feel the truth of this. I felt that this was one of the great gifts viewing that movie gave me — a recognition that I don’t know how or when it will end, so the best thing I can do is to love better, love more fully, more deeply, more widely. If it’s all going to end tomorrow, why the Hell not? Why would we let fear stop us from loving?
Last night, I watched the documentary, “Won’t You Be My Neighbor?” about the life of Mr. Rogers. I felt the same message from that movie. In one scene, Mr. Rogers had come out of retirement after the events of 9/11 to deliver a message to the world and he wasn’t sure he could do it. Here was a man who’d spent 30 years deeply soothing the very real fears of children (and, by extension, adults), and yet, facing the evil of that day he wasn’t sure he had it in him to deliver a message that would do any good.
Yet he went ahead and did it. As he always did.
What I got out of that movie, more than anything, was the courage it takes to love. But how much does it mean? If nothing else, it sure makes our life better; one could witness that Fred Rogers was a truly happy man, but he was happy not because he stayed on the surface of things, but because he faced the challenges of being human — all of the ways we hurt each other — and found ways to address them from the heart. And by doing that, by using the power of television, he was able to spread love to millions.
No, not everyone will have that spectacular impact; not all of us will be TV stars. But what if none of that matters, what if we are simply stars to those we come into contact with and that’s enough?
The photo for this post is of a woman escaping the war in Ukraine with her pet. I have a feeling she is a star to that pet. I heard about this photo, or at least one like it, on The Daily Evolver podcast the other day and it moved me. I was biking as I listened and began to feel very sad, thinking about our family’s cute little Jelly, a Shih Tzu dog, that I think is as much cat, as much goat, as much pig, as she is dog. Doesn’t matter; she makes me love better and I love her for it and to think of all the pets that also are impacted by our stupid human warring, well, it breaks me up.
Later on that ride, I saw several stray cats that hang out near a high school and, again, I felt sad thinking about if war came to my peaceful neck of this world and what would happen to them, the feelings they might have. It sucks pondering these things but I think it also makes us stronger. It’s like exercising the heart; it hurts, but by feeling that hurt, our capacity to love grows.
When I started this, I thought I was going to address the situation in Ukraine more directly. I thought I was going to write about my feeling that the “leaders” of the world — from Putin to Biden to Trudeau to, well, any of them — are either idiots, insane, or downright demonic. I don’t know that; I do know that I’ve reasons for feeling those things because when I try to apply reason to their actions, I can’t find anything reasonable. All I can find are dark thoughts that make me feel despondent, that bring me back to the scary headline of this post, the “I don’t know what’s going to happen and that scares the shit out of me.”
But hey, so be it. I took today off from all these events after writing this, riding my bike for about 40 minutes on a lovely crisp late winter, Pisces season day, to a local movie theater to take in a classic from a favorite director of my childhood, Steven Spielberg’s take on “West Side Story”. It was a wonderful escape, especially for a guy who must confess had never seen the original movie or the play (at least that I remember!).
All I knew was “West Side Story” is one of the pinnacle pieces of 20th Century American drama and I enjoyed the hell out of it. I let the music and the emotion of it wash over me for a few hours, ate some popcorn, drank a soda, and let the world outside of me do what it would. I didn’t know if it would still be here when the movie was finished, but it was. Still, that thought, that feeling of not having control over whether the world will continue is a scary one. But such is life and, well, regardless, I’m happy to be here for it, whatever it is.
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