My nearest and dearest appear to be worried about me. “What difference does it make if you fret like this?” “You cannot change anything, so why not try to be ‘more normal’ about all of this?” These are the kinds of things that I am getting asked. This was the gist of a long phone conversation that I had with someone especially close to me last night. And others have asked me as well. I am no one special. I am just an ordinary, somewhat above average talented graphic designer who also builds 3D stuff in SL. Toys really. I teach graphic design. I think I teach it well. But, none of this is anything special. I have no outstanding mission in life. I have no particular insights myself. I just observe. I listen to people that I think do have insight. From what they tell me I try to understand, I try to make sense.
Other than that I am quite helpless really. I have no power. No input. And I don’t want any of that anyway. I am quite solitary by nature. I prefer my own company. I am not a leader or an organizer. I am an elderly, rather eccentric, introverted woman.
What has happened over the past 2 months is scaring me. I cannot understand it. The logic of it. The uncertainty of it. So, one can either drift down the road into all sorts of conspiracy theories, or one can go down my route which is that the world is governed by a cadre of ignorant, hubris ridden, quite possibly quasi-psychopathic technocrats who get away with murder over and over again (sometimes quite literally murder), never even to be noticed by a propaganda deluged world public. Either route is scary. So, I am definitely not Tinkerbell these days. Which is another thing that I am accused of. Always being in such a horrible mood. Which I am, yes. Fretting. Inevitably, I am very scared. Which doesn’t help the bad disposition either.
So – why do I fret? Why don’t I let it go? Accept the prevailing consensus, think that everything will be OK at some point, and move on. I can’t. Even though I know that fretting will not get me anywhere.
We are not a terribly pleasant species. But we do have one thing that makes us special. We ask questions. We want to know. It is not because we will get any answers or that we will find solutions or be able to make miraculous changes. We are inquisitive because that is what we are. It is innate. Asking questions, trying to figure stuff out even when we know full well that we will never be able to get there – that is what we humans do. Isn’t it?
So, why isn’t everyone around me doing it? That I am doing it does not appear as anything special to me at all. Why everyone else isn’t doing it – that seems to me to be the real question here. If all our forebears hadn’t constantly fidgeted around with unanswerable questions would there ever even have been a species called homo sapiens? Wouldn’t we have been extinguished long ago? If we had just accepted conditions as they are? We cannot run as fast as our predators. We have far less muscle strength than they do. We cannot climb trees as fast. We do not have claws or fangs. All we have for surviving is our brain. Which asks and asks and asks, and then eventually something collective happens out of which emerge remarkable individuals who do find answers to what appeared to be unanswerable dilemmas for so many before them.
I am not one of those capable ones. I am just a minion in the crowd. But, if there is such a thing as a collective unconscious, or what Rupert Sheldrake called morphic resonance, all of us “fretters” out here who are questioning what is going on now, contribute tiny droplets to a sea out of which eventually there can come an answer. May come an answer. Not guaranteed at all, just maybe. But for an answer to emerge I think that there has to be a build up of anxiety. Stuff doesn’t just come out of a vacuum. There has to be a collective need.
So again – the question is not why I fret. I am a human being. I question. I seek answers. I try to figure things out even if I know that I can’t. I fret. That is my job. Why the hell isn’t everyone else fretting? That should be the real question here. Shouldn’t it?
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