What, Me Worry?

The last message was a little too realistic to be fun. I will postpone the next math installment for another time. 

Reality can be depressing, really depressing. Don't get me started. However, we are made to deal with reality. Being aware of what's real and doing something about it is what brought us here in this moment and place. We are the progeny of countless generations of survivors in a wonderful yet problematic world that the ancestors dealt with successfully. They confronted it, tried to understand it, and found a way forward. Although reality is sometimes depressing, optimism and hope are standard equipment. When you need a chocolate bar, don't grab a screwdriver.

Hope comes in different flavours:
(a) denial: bad stuff is not going to happen; nothing to worry about
(b) passivism: not my job; it's up to the government or the experts or God
(c) fatalism: party on; eat, drink, and be merry for tomorrow...etc.
(d) pragmatism: doing our best and risking the uncertain outcome
(e) expanding perspective: knowing that we are a small part of something wonderful and enduring

I've spent some years on this and been through the stages and back again many times. I am frequently at (d) even though that means hard choices, effort, worry, expense, sacrifice, and an uncertain outcome. Denial isn't an option because I know too much. Passivism is a child's solution and it's time I grew up. Fatalism is an immoral evasion of responsibility, given what I know. Doing my best even if it may not work is the only option that is mature, rational, ethical, and has a chance of improving outcomes.

Expanding perspective is an ongoing project that could make pragmatism tolerable. We were each born at the centre of a tiny universe that just then appeared. As we grew and gained experience, the self expanded to include us: family, friends, community, humanity, life on earth, the biosphere, planets, stars and galaxies, everything and always. Belonging to everything and always dilutes the tragedy of our little story but honours us as miracles living a miracle with a say in what happens next. That may be enough. I tried to say so in a poem last year. The Sixth Look. I may not have found the right words. Still thinking about it.

More math and more science to come, as soon as I figure it out, I promise.