The World Isn't Ending. Our Humanity Is.

Ina Garten

 

It's 10:55 p.m. I told myself I'd go to bed tonight at a reasonable time, like a reasonable adult. Instead, I've spent the last hour looking into how to enact new laws and which platforms are the best for blogs nowadays. These ideas have nothing to do with each other and yet everything to do with my mindset.

Tonight, I held my tiny, sleeping human in my arms while I desperately tried to figure how to solve...everything. For her. For me. For you. To protect the good. To punish the bad. To help the people hurting, and stop the people who hurt others. I have no answers, but a lot of ideas. Some of which are legal, others not so much. My first thoughts are a little too Thanosy, according to my husband. 

I haven't written in a year and a half, although ideas keep reverberating around my brain like a ping pong ball gone mad. The last time I wrote, I promised my new blog would be up and running - which it is not, clearly. Nothing is running, except my mind. Decision fatigue is partly to blame for my lack of action in writing, but so is literally everything going on in the world. While my life is good - great, even - so many others are not. The amount of harm and damage being done everywhere bothers me in ways I don't know how to express on here anymore. I cannot sit at a computer and be genuine with the things I want to say without a) angering some people, b) getting stalked or trolled for my honest thoughts, and c) screaming in all caps with an unbridled anger that would make me seem unhinged. Which I am, proudly, as a human who has empathy, critical thinking skills, and knows how to not only cite sources, but research facts. All of which are things that seems to have gotten flushed down the toilet collectively across the world. 

Moments ago, as I let the dog out for the millionth time, I paced my back patio full of furious energy. Furious that our ding-dong, Hitler reincarnated president is still worshiped by what can only be described as a cult at this point. Furious at every news article about yet another pastor/teacher/supposedly "safe" adult that manipulates and harms children in the most horrific ways. Furious about the horrors women face in Afghanistan, the never-ending wars resulting in never-ending murders of innocents, the hate crimes, the increased violence against women overall, and let's not forget the data centers draining resources - to name just a little of the chaos.

I want to blame the algorithms for my intense sense of awareness, but that wouldn't be fair. Not entirely. Since becoming a mother, I study the world like it's my job. I watch. Everything. How people act, how they respond, how they manipulate. I consume documentaries as a way of research to both understand and avoid the pitfalls of humanity. If I can grasp all the ways one can be tricked and harmed, surely I can teach my child how to not only avoid those people, but fight them. This is the hope, anyway.

My mother will tell you these are the end times because her pastor told her so, but I know better. These are man-made times. I remind her that throughout the world, for as long as we can trace back, humans have suffered at the hands of other humans, all while probably thinking the world was ending. And it was, for them. Slavery. The Holocaust. Agent Orange. History is littered with horrific things humans created, humans enacted, humans did - and will continue doing to one another because too many of us are cruel idiots who never learn. Many of these past horrors happened as firsts, were condemned, and wrongs were (sort of) righted. Unfortunately, there is a major backslide happening worldwide. We have all the resources at our fingertips allowing us to know better - to do better - and half of the world would rather see it unfurl for the sake of ego, power, and control.

It's 12:20 a.m. I still have no real solutions, but I do know one thing: The fire I feel inside won't die down, nor will it consume me. It will continue to rage, unbridled and untamed, as will I.