Editorial #158 What Are We Fearing?
It is surprising what a difference a year makes. Last year, on St. Patrick’s week, was the “bomb cyclone” which no one had seen anything similar. The economic impact was not isolated to this region as other parts of the country also experienced similar hardship and physical damage. The Irony is this current “perfect storm”, with the virus and economic down turn, is also something we have never seen before.
The co-incidence of these events, a year apart, will hopefully not be a pattern but just another event on the list of things like: 9-11, Pearl Harbor, the crashes of 1929, the Kennedy assassinations, the 1987 farm crisis, the dot-com crash or the subprime mortgage crisis. The commonality of all these events is they all inflicted fear into everyone who remembers them. But we must also remember that we survived them and the world did not end for us.
What are we really afraid of? Assuming it didn’t kill us, it is the fear of change. We fear it will not be business as usual again. We are afraid our life style will be compromised. We worry that poverty may be something we experience. We fear the unknown, but how is that different from the start of any day? We can never know what is going to happen tomorrow. We can only deal with it. It is part of life and we all know we will not get out of here alive.
The real difference, compared to the previous disasters, is how we find out about these happenings. Social media and the instantaneous sensationalization of these events is now standard procedure. These happenings usually have little impact on our life, if we were not told about them. Fanning the flames, second guessing, complaining and criticizing is becoming weaponized. The mantra “Never let a good disaster go to waste” is the only way the media has to get our attention. It is getting worse because apathy is making society numb to it. The advertising slogan “Bad news sells” are the only words the media lives by. It is not to inform to make the world a better place. Only complain about it.
Many of us would still find something to worry about if we didn’t notice these events. What we really fear is losing those we love. We are living longer so we will have more memories to cherish and we will see more of our loved ones passing through this life before us. The saddest part is reminiscing about the things we had that are now gone, not appreciating them at the time. We regret not doing the things we should have done, not to mention some of the things we did. We are all told to live in the moment but the present is always fleeting into the past before we are aware of what is happening right now.
So in these time of extremes, remember these events are only reference points which we use as an index to memories in our life. The most important thing on our grave stone is the “dash” between the date of birth and the date of death. That dash represents our entire life where everything we experienced is contained. To those who look at your grave, everyone’s “dash” looks the same.
This is Keith Kube wishing you the best in making the world a better place.
Bumper: Keith has a regular commentary on WJAG 780 radio at 7:40 on Tuesday and Thursday mornings. Check his website www.keithkube.com for past editorials.