This Age Of Anxiety

A huge challenge looms ahead of me at work, and I feel like I've been thrown into a churning sea without a life preserver. There is so much to absorb. Some days I feel up to the task, but then I attend a meeting or another branch in the labyrinth is revealed, and I become that ant on the sidewalk you mercifully step over. I'm marching toward my task, but I'm only slightly aware of my size disadvantage and that I am coursing through an enormous world fraught with peril. I am getting it...slowly. It reveals my achilles heel, which is my impatience with myself. I am wired from the thoughts of this, and my effort. Sleep is fitful most nights, even on weekends. Trying not to worry, but this is my superpower. It's gotten me through so much in the past, but it also punishes me.

I was woken again this morning by the heavy equipment across the street from me and just past the row of houses there. Since I've moved here it's been an empty meadow where the rabbits that feed in my yard some nights return to when they are done. It's slated to become lots for eight more mcmansions and it looks like this now:

I feel horrible for the rabbits. They're just trying to survive and raise families, as they've done for countless generations. Now humans, the big bad bully of the world, comes in and stomps all over everything, heedless of our animal friends and of the remorseless damage we inflict upon our mother. We live an unsustainable existence, and we refuse to see what we do. Instead we talk of colonizing Mars, another planet we can chew up and spit out. Fortunately, Mars is inhospitable enough to us that we won't be able to live there. But imagine the hubris of contemplating such a thing. All the lessons contained within this life, and we have yet to learn one of them. It's so simple. Take care of other beings and our home. Not even the constant admonishment toward doing it for the children is enough.

When I was very young, there were empty fields and meadows to run around in and explore. They're disappearing fast. The bees know this too, and suffer the consequences of the many poisons with which we fill our environment. Cancer rates rise, and we offer sympathy and prayers...but we still engage in the behaviors leading to it. To sum it up crudely, we shit where we eat. Copiously. We don't change. Who else will save us from us?