My special friend was in the hospital for 10 days and is now having a difficult recovery at home, which I am attending around the clock. I’m living in a house which is not my own. My customary routines are a thing of distant memory. Every hour is an improvisation.
Fortunately, my friend’s life is not in danger. We are taking advantage of the immense privilege of living in a system that concentrates resources among a small number of people; to wit, us! That is, we’re going to the doctor regularly. I am frankly amazed by how well the system works, when it works, while also being aware that we get the care we need only because literally billions of other people have no care at all.
This is the bizarre “dual life” that collapse-aware people live these days. I inhabit a realm of order and plenty, where people want to help me and give me what I need. Meanwhile, children are being deliberately starved in Gaza and elsewhere, and the Earth System is convulsing in a crisis that will crush all of civilization within the foreseeable future. “Cognitive dissonance” does not even begin to describe the mental fracture which I endure on a daily basis.
Meanwhile, I must face up to some unpleasant truths about myself. Losing my routine has exposed weaknesses in my character. I don’t adapt well to change. I am grouchy and unpleasant when I’m required to do things that I don’t usually do. I place a high value on my own comfort, which I arrange with a dainty fastidiousness bordering on the obsessive. In my usual situation, I have created a careful structure to insulate myself from the vicissitudes of “real life”; I’ve made a nice little cage for my domesticated being, and I rely on it absolutely.
This does not bode well for the hard times which are to come! When I must travel some distance to get a few gallons of water for the day, I will not be complaining about the water temperature from the tap. When I am fashioning some sort of meal from emergency rations handed out by surly and abusive government agents, I will not be complaining about another trip to the grocery store. When I am rationing the last few tablets of pain-relieving medication, I will not be complaining that the pharmacy is closed for lunch.
In short, I am a zoo animal and the keepers are abandoning their posts! I don’t blame them. They have families too. But at least they could open the cage door so I can take my chances in the chaotic city streets!
All of this is in my imagination. Everything is fine. If I don’t raise my eyes to survey the larger landscape, I can pretend for the moment that the life I live in my well-appointed cage is permanent. How could it be otherwise?
And yet, my eyes raise themselves without my consent. I see the whole picture whether I want to or not. Collapse-awareness is a mixed blessing, as I’m sure you, gentle reader, understand most thoroughly. We can feel the winds that precede the giant wave that is approaching. We see the tide of destruction looming in the distance under a darkening sky. We hear the cries of agony among the creatures who are dying, and, even worse, we hear the silence of those who are already gone.
And yet, breakfast must be made if there is food to make it. Appointments must be kept while the roads are open and the doctors are in their offices. Medicines must be gotten and taken, so that pain may be relieved. Life goes on!
Life goes on.
Photo by Lucas Leonel Suárez on Unsplash.
Canary, canary -
bright and yellow!
How can you be
Such a noisy fellow!
Don’t make a fuss-
Oh, what a crime!
Please keep aloof -
Now’s not the time!
Silence is golden
Wings be a-folden!
Lie down quietly
There in your cage.
There is money
To be made
There is money to be —
Thank you David for acknowledging the cognitive dissonance. I feel lighter now.
I just learned in class - we won't learn to swim until the flood waters are up to our 'bum.' The flood waters are too shallow now to learn much about ourselves.
So I'm hearing, I won't learn much about myself until I have to struggle...