A time of tender mercies

I have never been one to look away. Knowledge is power, right?

When I get up in the morning I make coffee, check my email and then go straight for the news.

For the first time in well, ever, I sometimes feel as if I just don’t want to know.

Global warming, the world on fire, COVID-19, rampant racism and divisiveness. We’re not coming together, we are falling apart.

It’s weird, as my own world has been imperfect for so very long now. You might think I’d be inured. As it turns out, misery does not always like company.

There is no comfort in worldwide suffering. None. Dystopia was once in the realm of imagination, a plot line to be enjoyed from the comfort of ones couch.

Sure, part of what made it all so compelling was the whiff of danger–the possibility that cataclysmic events might actually lie in the future.

But most of us thought that would be later rather than sooner.

That was before the year 2020, when the shit hit the fan all at once.

Our collective challenge is adapting on the fly. Trying to maintain a semblance of normality while also understanding that some things are never going to be the same.

The optimist in me says we can do this. The realist understands that it is not going to be easy.