Life As Performance Art 151

Good morning, Gentle Reader. A gracious good morning to all of you, wherever you might happen to live in this world. It seems that I have readers everywhere for this dear little blog: besides Canada, and the Paranoid States of America (whoops, pardon that little error, my friends who live in the United States of America), Germany, Portugal, Colombia, Indonesia, Ukraine, United Arab Emirates, Kazakhstan, Finland, France, all of your countries are trending this week. I also track readers from India, Costa Rica, South Africa, Mexico, Brazil, the Netherlands, Sweden, Chile, Norway, Denmark, Saudi Arabia, Turkey, Spain, Russia, Egypt, Israel, to name but a few. This blog is and has been read all over the world. This is so gratifying, to think that my words can have even a tiny little bit of influence all over the world. This really makes my day, Gentle Reader. To all of you, a huge thank you and a big hug, and please share my blog with as many people as you can, as long as this doesn't mean putting at risk your employment, your marriage, your friendships, because, of course, not everyone is going to enjoy reading my dear little screed. Sometimes I even roll my eyes when I read this dreck! I really hope that my contribution can be positive, or mostly positive. Many of us are worried, and feeling downright anxious about the state of the world and the future of this earth, I among them. I am thinking of some conversations I was having yesterday. I was talking with two very fine people in my church, following the service, one of them being the priest. With one individual we were discussing a documentary we had both heard on CBC about a man, a heroin addict, being maintained by receiving clinically prescribed and administered heroin at a clinic, of how this has helped change his life, allowing him to move forward, reconnect with his family and with the community. The takeaway is a bit on the pessimistic side, unfortunately, since my friend at church is certain that this person, like so many others, will never recover from his addiction, that their only option, for the rest of their lives, will be to give them legally sanctioned heroin, twice a day, to help keep them stable, and to put other supports in place, especially secure housing, to help them move forward in life. It's harm reduction 101. I am not entirely persuaded that recovery will always be out of reach for at least some addicts. There will be those who never will recover, of course, and this is to be accepted and understood, and they will need to be maintained and supported for the rest of their lives. But I hesitate at saying that no one is going to recover. As I told my friend at church, it is because our governments are still doing such a poor job at funding and providing treatment options (likely because well-off Canadians hate and so loudly whine and complain about paying their share of taxes) that we have to rely so heavily on harm reduction without applying the other Four Pillars (besides harm reduction, there is prevention, enforcement and treatment, and we really need a fifth pillar, education) I am also persuaded that if we all care enough and work hard together enough and pay enough that we will see treatment and rehabilitation programs arise that will actually make recovery a little more possible and more accessible to those whom we have written off as hopeless. Maybe it will be just a few, maybe quite a few. Who only knows, but even if the glass is half-empty, the glass is also half-full. Then the priest and I got talking about climate change and global warming. She expresses a certain pessimism that this could be it, the end. Schnitzel for you, Tootsie! Everyone out of the pool. I see this more as a transition that we are going through. It is going to be a difficult, painful and traumatizing transition, but we are nowhere near the end. These are birth pangs for the beginning of a new era, and right now things are going to be very scary and unpredictable, especially with morons and maniacs like the Dump in the White House and Jair Bolsonaro in Brazil, the way his administration is encouraging ranchers and farmers to slash and burn the Amazon, putting the entire planet at risk, this is like those hoaky science fiction B movies of old where we have one egomaniacal idiot threatening to destroy the world. Now it's all coming true, or so it seems. But then, later on I was talking to my friend on Skype, who lives in Colombia, who also reads my blog, (when I tell him to!). He mentioned some articles he read that had been written in the eighties and nineties, all of them proclaiming, because of climate change and environmental collapse, the end of the world as we know it by 2010, or, almost ten years ago. Not that things are super ideal or peachy keen as they are, because they aren't, and we still have tonnes of evidence of rapidly creeping climate change. There could be the possibility that it isn't going to be as bad as many of us fear, and this in a way squares with especially our current tendency towards fear, panic and catastrophizing everything. On the other hand, it could get even worse. Who only knows? In the meantime, what do we do? Well, this is what I am going to do. I am going to continue the three R's, Reduce, Reuse and Recycle. Except for flying, I am going to continue to see that my carbon footprint remains hovering at around zero. I will continue to be vegetarian, but I refuse to ever become vegan. And most of all, in a spirit of gratitude, I am going to continue to treasure, enjoy and cherish my friends in church, my friend in Colombia and all my other friends, and I am going to continue to try to treat others well, with dignity and respect and care, and I am going to continue to enjoy the beauty of nature and the wonder of learning and of doing my due diligence to go on contributing and to draw out the very best in myself and in others. I am also going to keep my sense of humour, as sick as it is sometimes. That is the very best I can do. You too, Gentle Reader.