Isn’t it nice to think so
I’ve been thinking a lot lately about the what if’s in life and we’ve been talking a lot about living for today, and it occurred to me that things are happening that have never happened before in our lives. For instance, I wrote about my mother dying, my friend wrote about his daughter dying, friends are writing about treating cancer, and all of this is happening in this cyberworld and we’re talking about it and it’s difficult to fully comprehend life because no one is coming behind us to sweep up all the collateral damage and sew it together into a cogent narrative that has been digested, reflected and articulated. Instead we are writing our life in media res.
In the New York Times today was an article about the danger of being always on. Us here in the blogosphere know that only too well, when you write angry, or write hurt, or write sad you are in the moment, without time to reflect, without the Woodsworthian “moments recollected in tranquility” – you are on, sometimes in media res or in the midst of it happening, and it’s hard to convey what you are hoping to say – maybe you’re saying something like a friend’s post recently entitled, “time flies, life goes on” or another friend’s email that said, “I’m hoping this time it is different.”
I’ve been thinking about how much life has changed in the last two decades and it seems like a whole lifetime has passed and come upon us that we are all still so unaware of – my first computer in 1983, my first email address in 1995, my first website in 1999, by first blog in 2004 – we are all living on this world wide web and I’m not sure if the web and its instantaneous world offers solace or heightens the fragility of our lives.
I keep thinking it will all become clear to me and that is why I doggedly keep at it, but some days, I am not so sure. And right now I fear a conspiracy with Yahoo and my horoscope as if someone were reading my thoughts and offering me pithy advice:
April 11, 2010
-
Taurus (4/20-5/20)Why does it seem so much easier for you to believe that something bad can happen, but so much more difficult to trust in your good fortune? That’s the big question you’re facing right now. You’ve got great potential, but in order to really see it through, you need to believe not only that you have it, but that the universe needs to see you shine. Don’t just question your surroundings — question yourself!
May 26th, 2010 at 11:16 am
While we have no evidence of a scientific nature to demonstrate that this will happen, there are many other events that could pose a threat to us and to the planet – even before the year 2012. Events like an asteroid hitting our planet, a major flu outbreak, a nuclear or biochemical conflict all threaten our species. We have no guarantees in our lives, but by being ready for the likely events we can increase our likelihood of surviving them.