Things are never totally “good” in the world — there’s always something going on, but most of the time while it does upset me or I find myself concerned by news events I generally can get back to a “normal” life, in spite of tragedy. It’s something we all do and indeed, have to do.
Sometimes, though, things seem to come at a rate that just seems like the universe is pissed at us.
It’s one thing to have had the year and a half long Ukrainian conflict happening, and event I have strong feelings on but have not written about here. It’s another thing to, while this is still going on, have the madness of what amounts to a terrorist invasion of Israel. That’s seriously another level of bullshit that’s coming after what feels like a near decade of never ending hell.
As I said, though, things are never totally “good” but the past 4-8 years of events globally (let alone in my own life) have really been quite a bit for a generation of people who grew up with things being relatively stable — or, at least, it felt that way to us in the 90’s, before 9/11, Afghanistan, Iraq, ISIS/ISIL, etc… it’s all fucking crazy.
It’s always been crazy, though, hasn’t it? In many ways the world is safer than it’s ever been before but the fact that we can now see these events happen across the world in real time from the point of view of the very people experiencing the event (or, even worse, the perpetrators of the horror) makes it far more real than the historic way of learning about things hours, or days, after they happened, if not longer, and only being able to see media of the events after the fact: tiny snapshots of history don’t do any event justice.
Yes, the world is safer than ever before, in the grand scheme, but to realize that it was, historically, even worse than what it is now, is frightening.
With that being said, I’ve taken this weekend to try to escape and enjoy some things: Writing was not one of those things, as I felt I couldn’t continue with my writing without addressing recent events in some form. I’ll try to cement my thoughts and soon write a piece, but this weekend I chose to just step back for a bit, for whatever value that brings to me.
More to come, as always….
