Life As Performance Art 116

The world is coming to an end. And I'm happy. Is the world really about to end? Am I really happy? Well, it isn't that I don't care about the end of the world. Of course I care. But how is being miserable going to help? So, I choose to be happy. I press the joy selection. So, here I am, still listening to the CBC every day, still subjecting myself to the never-ending tsunami of doom, gloom, anguish and creeping Armageddon, and here I am just laughing it all off. It is a beautiful morning and Greenland is melting. Here in Vancouver the golden morning sun is creeping so sensuously and joyously across the buildings, the trees, the lawns and the streets, as the day begins its hymn of joy, making everything gleam, glisten and shine like the City of God. Of course, I'm still happy. The biggest island in the world, Greenland, is melting, and it is going to raise the sea levels by seven metres and we're all going to die! Well, of course we're all going to die. It's written right here in the contract. No one gets out of here alive. We all have up to a hundred years, give or take, and then we shuck off this mortal coil. It used to be just three score and ten, if we were lucky, and now we're living longer than ever. Is climate change a problem? Yes. Are we causing it? Natch. Am I happy? Yep! Am I doing anything about it? Everything I can. I almost religiously reduce, reuse and recycle, and except for my annual vacations on airplanes, I keep a tiny carbon footprint, given that I don't drive a vehicle. Those two awful teenage boys from Port Alberni are still at large in northern Manitoba, and even though they haven't even seen the inside of a courtroom, trial by public opinion, largely thanks to the CBC, has already convicted and sentenced them for three murders, that someone else might well have committed. I'm still happy. The folks in the local communities up there are all shitting themselves in fear and locking themselves in their homes because, well, they're afraid. Sometimes I'm afraid. But joy is stronger than fear, because joy comes from love, and there is no fear in love, therefore it doesn't really affect me much. Well, I live downtown, where I am likely to face every single day such risks and dangers that they wouldn't imagine in a single year of their privileged existence in those remote communities (except for grizzly bears and the little black flies!) and I'm happy. CBC thrives on making people afraid. I listen to it anyway. It's nice to know what's going on. Especially if it's all about the end of the world. CBC also thrives on making us feel guilty and miserable. Now they're talking about racism. Racism is still a problem. Racism has always been a problem. We are rather horrible beings, you know. And we will do whatever we can to find excuses to hate, because this makes us feel superior, and if it isn't race or religion, it will be poverty, or gender, or sexual preference, or, pick any one. And I'm still happy. I refuse to be miserable. I will get grumpy and irritable at times, because I am a human being, and therefore most imperfect, but I will also always try to know just when to blow the whistle on my silliness and get on with this business of living like a responsible adult. Which also includes...being happy. Simply because, if I'm miserable, I'm pretty much useless to everybody, and who needs to see another grumpy frowning face in the crowd? Joy is infectious, and if this joy has its source in love, it will be even more infectious, as well as a primal healing force to overcome all the fear, misery and hate that circles around us like a dark foul tide of sewage. Everything shines in this gleaming summer morning, shining like the New Jerusalem, shining like the City of God.