I always hate doing things like this, and I've been resisting for a while now. I never want to just go off on some rant about how awful everything is and how hopeless the future is, but sometimes it grips my mind and refuses to release it. It was a chance occurence that "Dearly Beloved" from Kingdom Hearts happened to appear in my recommended videos on YouTube. That chance occurence has but me in a much better position to look at the world, and more importantly, talk about it.
I want to refuse to watch the news sometimes. I can't really do that since I still live with my parents and they watch it at the dinner table, but I really do just want to tune it out completely sometimes. Murder, arson, murder, deadly car crash, breathing gives me cancer, murder, riots, protests, gas prices are going up, murder, politicians are flinging shit at each other, and murder. That's generally the order of events. Oh yeah, and traffic jams get thrown in there too. And today I had the bonus of my father (who's currently laid off this week, even) describe an elaborate Muslim plot to take over the world by rooting themselves into our neighborhoods and using our democratic systems against us.
Also to consider is the upcoming apocalypse, global warming, oil depletion, imminent terrorist attacks, hackers tearing apart the internet, the government imploding, the absence of any jobs, and a crumbling infrastructure...well, amongst even MORE things. That list brings up a question I asked myself at this exact time last week: "Why in the hell would I want to raise kids in a world like this?" All of these things seem like they're going to happen tomorrow, and when they don't it could just be the next day. It's overwhelming. You can't put it out of your mind either, since these are huge, "important" problems that will inevitably affect the way you live your life. You must take your time to mull over each one and make a stand for them. All the while going about your business.
If the usual lengths of my blog posts don't make it clear, I tend to think about things a lot. These issues are no different. Tie these large scale issues in with my personal ones and you've got a nice conga line of depression on your hands. I struggle to find something to hold onto then, some ray of hope that lets me know it's going to be okay. I think it gets harder to find that thing each time. I'm a staunch advocate in seeing the beauty in things, even bad things, but sometimes I just can't. I pride myself on being raised and growing up in a generation full of unique experiences, and yet, it feels like I may not have anyone to share those experiences with. I can't help but wonder if every generation has felt this way.
It's not like world-ending conflicts have never been in the center of history. Surely, World War II threatened people with the prospect of life being changed forever, and the feeling must have been taken up to eleven with the advent of killing machines like the atomic bomb. All of a sudden, completely destroying a country or altering the very face of the world altogether was a possibility. The generation that came before mine grew up in constant fear of a loss of control of that power under the shadow of the Cold War. They must have felt the same things that I'm feeling, right? In a world where we now have so much more than we did thirty or forty years ago, we must be better off, right?
Impossible is the task of deciphering which things are actually relevant, or which things are even true. It would seem that we have more problems today than we used to, however, I cannot truly attest to this due to my not living in the past. I can't comparatively say that things have gotten worse. Even if I had lived back then, age would bias everything I do. Only one with eternal youth could make an accurate comparison of the pressure that is put onto every individual's shoulders today. I can safely say, more or less, that life today is more complex than it used to be, and this factors in greatly, although complexity, like in literature, does not always come with negative connotations.
Of course, this still leaves the issue of coping with living in the shadow of so many things that could swallow you at any moment. The world is getting darker, and the news is never good. Nothing seems to be certain, and it's almost sad that that's comforting. As a writer, thinker, and human, I always want to find a reason to keep exploring. If the world, or at least a way of life that I love, is going to end, there seems to be little point. Life is not beautiful in the way we want it to be. Life's beauty is bittersweet. The pockets of good seem to pale in comparison to the vast expanses of darkness that loom overhead. For how long can the light give us hope?
Or better yet...what does it truly take to make a light of our own?
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