One of those days; the kind you'd like to skip. Pretend it never was.
BULLETIN!
RUN FOR YOUR LIFE!
THE BIG ONE IS ON ITS WAY!
Internet; TV; iPhone; sirens; doors slamming; dogs howling. Hair tuning white; screaming; shouts of Where do we go? Who's got the kids? Running feet.
Then; half-hour later.
HAHA, FOLKS!
FALSE ALARM.
SOMEONE PRESSED THE WRONG BUTTON.
NO PROBLEM.
PICK UP WHERE YOU LEFT OFF.
OK?
OK? Whaddya mean. OK?
That was as close to the Big IT as I've ever come; and I'm no spring chicken.
Dr. Strangelove was my first thought. If you've never seen that Stanley Kubrick movie, you have to look it up and watch. I mean, it's so on the money; it's where we are now; where we're going; and given the state of the Oh, Yeah? Put Up Your Dukes! combative, chaotic, everyone for himself/herself, looney-tunes world we're living in, the momentum driving us to the Big Zip looks unstoppable.
How did we get here? World exploding; blowing apart; fragments; countries; whizzing off in different directions; reverse footage of a film strip; of the universe; planets zipping off into the darkness surrounded by other planets; smaller and smaller as they get further and further away. Now just specks of light; infinity. No end.
No longer One World; meetings; traffic rules; ambitious; addressing problems; looking for solutions; translators; I hear you; You hear me; discussion; compromise; agreement.
Question is: Now what?
What to do?
Move to another country? Where? Another planet?
Nah. As I've said in another context: You can run but you can't hide.
But as me; as you; just us; people. Where do we go from here? Is that shadow looming over there in the darkness the angel of you know what? End of story.
For me, it's keep on keeping on; never giving up. Always being me; right up to lights out; the very end. Being who I am. Living every part of every day. Engaged.
Taking it one at a time; a plan for today; a plan for the next day. Experiencing each one as the whole.
That was a good one.
Next day; new. A blank slate.
Fresh ideas. Chalk another one up.
Each day a blank slate.
Fill it with good stuff.
And so forth.
Day after day after day.
As Yogi Berra, catcher and sage of the New York Yankees, would have it:
It ain't over till it's over.