Time passes like that. Snap! It’s gone in an instant, just like that. Snap! I save an email for later and next thing I know it’s six years later. Snap! Gone. Ticktock, click, click. I look at a file saved to my Desktop that I started writing in November 2020 and apparently never got back to. It’s old news. Gone without ever being finished. Snap, snap, snap. Move it to the Trash folder.
The dust has settled from our egregious year of 2020. We fought tooth and nail through a United States election that felt like our lives were in the balance. The most people who had ever voted, voted. Did you hear? I bet you did. I bet you heard all about it. The people came out and then they went home.
We lived through a pandemic. Well, most of us. It was really ripe there for a minute. People really cared about the fate of their world. Like, really, super cared as if it mattered. For a minute I thought people finally really cared about what was going on. Those people came out and then they went home, too.
The dust is settling on another doomsday landscape in the 21st Century. After nature started to heal just a tiny bit we find man has reemerged to pick the scab for a couple more decades. The social media platforms that, for the first time ever, were once filled with angry people who cared are now back to normal. I scroll a little and lose interest. People are talking about nothing all that important. The few who do are falling on deaf ears. They are drowned out by the sound of humans excitedly scrambling back to their office cubicles and factory line positions. They missed their water coolers and fingering over a box of filthy donuts. They were hamsters all along!
I have had great hope for humanity several times throughout my life. The year 2020 was another time when that hope emerged. The life many labeled as normal was put on hold for most people and we had more time to think about what really matters. They started voting and everyone seemed to be coming together to overthrow the evil old world styling of Klan-hooded grandmas and grandpas. Out with the old and in with the New Age. Ohm, baby.
Boy, did they have me fooled and I’m starting to get old enough where I shouldn’t be fooled by this ridiculous optimism anymore. I’m starting to root for the bad guys because that seems to be the only time the good guys get off their asses and pay attention.
The world is returning to the normal that it apparently loves. Until now, I had no idea that anyone actually wanted to do any of the things we were doing before. This has come as a complete shock to me. I really thought we all were aware of our slavery to the system. We were just waiting for a chance to make a break for it! This turned out to be another ridiculous fantasy in my optimistic head. Don’t they know there are more important things than all of the things they’re doing? No, apparently they do not know that.
History is filled with men, women, and others who have dedicated their lives to telling people the truth. They wisely held the mirror up and provided boxes full of proof, fact upon fact. Each one of them found out rather quickly that people will never believe you, no matter how strong a case you may build. These people who see real reality and are standing ten miles outside of the box can’t help themselves. I’m one of them. No matter how many times I get ignored for telling the truth, I just can’t seem to help myself from spending more time on speaking it into power.
There’s this hope that I think we outside-of-the-box-types all have had. It’s not that our individual work will make a difference. I think most of us overcame that illusion a very long time ago. My singular words will not awaken but a handful. We hope that our words eventually build such a tidal wave of truth throughout all of history that eventually “they” will get it. One day they will wake up and see the box that they are living in for the prison it actually is. Some day they will realize that it’s not about the cubicle, the instruction manual, or the hamster wheel. It’s not the God they created and it’s not the stock exchange. It’s so much bigger than that and we’ve spent so much time wasting away ignoring the actual plot.
Snap!
