It's All Performance Art 3

Everywhere we see people living in fear and anxiety. The world is going to end. One day. Could happen this morning, could occur in four and a half billion years. No one knows. And we aren't going to know till it happens. That's the way it's always been. Human civilization as we know it, the human species as we know it, could be teetering over the abyss right now because of runaway climate change. Will it all end? Well, eventually. I mean, will it end in our lifetime. Maybe, maybe not. In the meantime there are tsunami waves of emotion, fear, grief and anger sweeping the planet. But those have always been our dominant emotions. We seem to think that we are living in unique times. This has always been thought, or felt, throughout the ages, and in a way it's true. Each era, every epoch of our human existence, is unique. But not that unique. We are still all persons who fear and love, and care and hate and rage and eat and consume and create art, culture and beauty, and this has always been. There are constants that never change. Even now in this era that could well be our last kick at the can, but probably won't be. In California, more wildfires are chasing wealthy burghers from their lovely homes. That occurs now all over the earth, and it happens with alarming frequency here in Canada. Also floods, droughts and killer hurricanes. Worse, more intense and more frequent than ever. And all this, of course, can be traced to human induced climate change. And in the meantime conservative, and even not so conservative, politicians and others and especially the swine that run and work in Big Oil, are insisting that keeping their jobs and getting their lethal product to market is more important than preserving the planet for future generations of humans and the many other lifeforms that make our lives possible. None of this is funny. But I am still telling all of you that unless you learn to laugh, to find joy and happiness in the midst of your anger and tears, then you are going to destroy yourselves. We have to find the joy in life or life will turn into a gaping maw of eternal death and we will be all swallowed into it before we can rewrite our resumes. We have always lived in uncertain times. But here in the pampered west, we have lived like gods, kings and deities, and only now are we being confronted with the same lurking sense of mortality that no one else gets to escape from. So, why should we? For me life is a gift. For me, every moment is a sacred gift, and this fills me with love, which fills me with joy, and this is what sustains me and moves me forward. We still have to work and struggle against the idiots who want to destroy our planet with their short sighted greed. Maybe we could do it singing?