We had it once.

And thank God we weren't horrible with it. Or if we were it wasn't as bad as the times had produced, not in comparison. But who knows. History swallows facts and weaves them into moral tales by its writers, as found in all the old books, including that one.

It corrodes the mind. It tricks you to believe that you are extra ordinary, that your life has this meaning. That there is a reason for you being here, there, where no one else is, singled out, and by God, you will do whatever it takes to bring forth your adolescent visions of the future, spitting on grievances, proving that you were right all along and most if not all, wrong, or at best a hinderence in the grand scheme of the journey, from its humble beginnings to this grand and final affirmation.

The trouble is that you are not as unique as that. In the thin slice of now, no doubt, but not for ever. Many have stood on this same hill and are judged harshly by time and by taste. The tenets evolve. What is sacred now might get snickered at, the way we snicker at the weather as judgment for sin. And yet, this is still now and it might come to be after all. The collective psyche ebbs and flows with catastrophes like a leaf in the current. I am a firm believer in the size of this analogy. We are quite small as sizes go. But coming back to delusion's corruption, isn't doing always better that watching? Watching and learning certainly has its charm. Let's not forget its margin of safety. And the right to produce by mere survival as an added bonus.

So we watch, waiting for the inevitable and some say pessimistic outcome. But if you look back you will notice the waves as they pull to one extreme (by zealous ardour) only to reveal themselves for those excesses that horrify enough to make a pretty steep turn to a different direction.

In the meantime, you did complain about the monotony of life, didn't you? There is this cartoon in which as the Grim Reaper is leading the husband out the door, the wife, who's reading on the armchair, quips positively : "Think of it as one less thing to worry about!" I always took that as the future.


jam25