Unless a person has been living in Tristan da Cunha, where mail is received just once a year, the growing chaos and turbulence is easy to see.
Who doesn’t want to reach for a stiff drink, a comforting dessert, a hug from a loved one or snuggling with a furry household pet while getting lost in a mindless TV series? It’s easy to want to just go to sleep and forget about everything.
Almost all of us know that eventually we will be faced with one, or more, of the catastrophic scenarios we imagine or the feelings of pandemonium triggered by society’s possible — and some say imminent — collapse.
In spite of it all, it is possible to have a rich inner life and thrive through the chaos.
Rich Inner Life
There are 9 checkboxes toward having a richer inner life. While all 9 don’t have to be checked off, the more you accomplish, the richer your inner life will be.
- Know what you want.
- Have various interests.
- Not afraid of being alone.
- Value learning.
- Don’t bother with what others think.
- Also, mind your own business.
- Accept that there are things you can’t change.
- Be open-minded.
Will the Future Be Better?
Writing in Waiting for the Millennium, Part II, John Michael Greer’s visionary blog, The Archdruid Report, says:
“What it means is that the core faith of the age that is passing, the faith that the future will be better than the past or present, has become a delusion. In almost every sense, the future ahead of us will be worse than the present and the recent past.
“The vast majority of us will be much poorer than we have been; many of us will have to worry at least now and then about getting enough food to stay alive; most of us will have to do without adequate medical care; most of us will not retire; most of us will die at least a little sooner than we otherwise would have done. The security most of us take for granted, with police and firefighters on call and the rule of law acknowledged even when it’s not equally enforced, will in many places become a fading memory; many areas that have been at peace for a long time will have to cope with the ghastly realities of domestic insurgency or war.
The Takeaway
These will be a part of our daily lives for most of us, for decades. Once we get on the other side, we won’t find a magical golden age. Instead, a temporary rest stop on the highway of stabilization and partial recovery, which lasts for about 50-years. Then the next crisis hits.
Photo by Jade Stephens on Unsplash
Jerry Nelson is an American writer living the expat life in Argentina. You can find him at any of hundreds of sidewalk cafes and hire him through Fiverr, join the quarter-million who follow him on Twitter or contact him at [email protected]