It's New Year's Eve.
This has been a saddening year for me.
Nothing personally catastrophic has happened to me. Well, maybe, but it all seems trivial compared to the
amount of suffering in the world currently.
I've grown increasingly less tolerant of pointless festivity.
It feels "unnatural" to be celebrating this evening. I'm going over
to some close friends later, I've never been crazy about New Year's Eve - this year, along with Christmas, it all seems particularly forced.
I'm probably a bit more "New Agey" than many folks around here.
I don't wear hemp underwear or anything.
Alot of people would think my world view leans heavily toward Animism. I suppose it does.
I believe in Gaia, for that matter, I believe in a Living Universe - in the
intelligence, however different, of all things.
The Human population on Earth is enourmous. Nearly six and a half billion. That is a truly staggering number.
I suspect when the final numbers are in on the fatalities in Indonsesia, Sri Lanka, and vicinity they will be huge. Almost certainly over 200,000 - possibly 500,000. That's not alot compared to the world's population, but anyway you look at it, it's a catastrophic number.
These were not wealthy white people that died (less than one percent pehaps), and so their deaths don't count as much with our leaders here in the US - and probably in most white, first world countries as well.
Nor does the massive environmental and animal destruction "count" very much. We - citizens of this richest nation in history - are complicit in so many assaults on life, it's almost strange that it should be so shocking when life assaults us.
Although, "acts of nature", are generally seen as random - or at least non-specific - I can't help but wonder, why there? Why the good people of Sri Lanka or Thailand? Why not, horrible as it is to imagine - why not we, who are certainly guilty in the rape of this world?
It is still a mystery to me, what humankind is, in the larger scheme of things. I value life entire. Obviously being a man, I empathize with humanity more easily than some other species. But I can't help but wonder - is Gaia trying to tell us something? Does our Mother Earth want to remind us of Her power, or to heal Her wounds, or maybe both?
I am trying to listen, and understand - and to tune out the din of pointless celebration.
Happy New Year.