What Will Happen to the World - Aug 18 2021

 

What Will Happen to the World

Aug 18 2021

I'm becoming less and less interested

in what will happen to the world

after I'm gone.

I suspect nothing good.

But that could simply be my stage of life,

just as every generation

is either baffled by the young

or loses faith in them.

And if not that

then succumbs to nostalgia,

looking back

at a golden age

that likely really wasn't.

Nevertheless

problems multiply, population doubles,

and the world keeps speeding up

too fast to keep pace.

So I've found the saving grace

is a modest life.

Satisfied

with what I have,

and happy to be settled

in this small familiar place.

A quiet night

a glass of wine

a star-filled sky.

And a woman at my side

who will remember when I'm gone;

but I hope not look back

or live in the past

or surrender to nostalgia.

Who will simply by her presence

illuminate the world

and make things right.

Not actually less interested so much as less passionate. I have come to recognize my smallness, my impotence, and the futility of keeping current. Why sweat over coming to moderate informed opinions when you are powerless to do anything about it anyway?

I'm a born pessimist. And I don't tend to wear rose coloured glasses about the past. So yes, I'm not naturally inclined toward positivity! But I really do believe an objective case can be made that as a civilization – perhaps as a species – we are facing unprecedented risk. There are so many existential challenges all at once: climate change, a mismanaged pandemic, the rise of authoritarianism, and a woefully unsustainable economic model. Has culture coarsened? Has education failed? Have superstition, tribalism, and sanctimony triumphed? I don't feel hopeful. I'm glad I got to live when I did, beginning my life in the middle of the 20^th century.

So I take refuge in a small simple life and basic bourgeois values. Age usually has us narrowing our lives. Perhaps it's a wise choice, as well. I realize, of course, what a privilege this is is a privilege: of wealth; of the accident of birth.

Although I don't have this hypothetical woman in my life. But for those who do have a significant other, I imagine such an intimate relationship would be saving grace from cynicism and hopelessness.