Life As Performance Art 5

People take themselves very seriously, and everything else too. You would think that the world was about to end. But maybe it is about to end. The prognosis of accelerating climate change due to human activity is anything but promising. But, aside from the scientific models, which are generally pretty accurate, we aren't there yet, so we can't know for sure how it's all going to look. I'm still optimistic, but maybe foolishly so. I always like to to believe that there is going to be a day after. I might not know, or approve, of how it is going to look, but there is another day following this one, and we are going to be facing new challenges, new difficulties, and possibly even new opportunities. There is one particularly menacing spectre awaiting us, and this is the possibility of hundreds of millions, perhaps even billions, of human deaths over the next generation or two, if galloping climate change isn't somehow halted. Not to mention species' extinctions, which is to say that this is getting only worse, and that this is the sixth great species extinction since when the earth was a formless void. So, then, how dare I not take any of this seriously. But I do. I simply don't think about it all the time. For one thing, we are all in uncharted territory, for which reason, we still don't know exactly what is going to happen. I have had in the course of my life a lot of contact with death and other catastrophe. As much as I might enjoy the relative stability of my life over the last fifteen years or so, I know that this is not to be taken for granted. It could all be swept from under my feet, in the twinkling of an eye, and then what? I would still go on. There is no other option. I could wind up in prison, should our human rights protections erode significantly, and given my inability of keeping my mouth shut, or I could wind up in intensive care from an accident, or gravely ill, or homeless, should our governments further renege on their promises to the most vulnerable members of society. Or, and more likely, none of those things will happen, and I have only to look forward to a comfortable retirement in two years, and then what? There are no guarantees in life, only variables. What I am left with is a huge sense of gratitude, for what I already have, for what I have had in the past, and for this future all unknown. For this reason, I often feel sorry for those who have no religious faith. There is in their lives no sense or cause for gratitude, because they do not see that God has done all these things for them, and that it is God himself who sustains and nurtures us, and gratitude, as we all know, is the source of all joy in our lives.