ReBoot

What If We Started Over?

Thoughts after the loss of 50 lives in FL

After reading about the misguided horrors that have happened through the news, my mind keeps wandering to the wish that we, the human race, could just start over. Bad things happen everywhere, some of them are picked-out and highlighted for weeks, some of them mentioned and then forgotten, some remembered forever so that the victims can be honored, and some of them are never found out. People are constantly affected by small negative actions: a passer-by yelling at a stranger for walking on the wrong sidewalk, someone letting their dog defecate on a lawn and not respectfully picking it up. Some are bigger like verbal or physical abuse, and others more newsworthy like rape or murder, but they all spread sadness, anger, fear and hatred. That’s what it seems the world is being filled with.

For thousands of years there have been tales of “The End” coming, and it seems like the logical result of so much bad energy piling on society like layers of smothering, time-colored silt. It’s getting so thick that we forget what we were in the beginning and what’s truly important for the human life and soul. Did we have a clearer perspective back before suicide terrorists and the piling-on of lawsuits for an individual’s hurt feelings? The truth is, murder and lying for self preservation and elevation has happened since the beginning of human “intelligence.” We have the gist of it written down, and we teach our youth about it. But the same mistakes keep happening, we don’t seem to be learning.

Is it because half the world is teaching “tolerance” while the other half is teaching “justice”? Can’t minds come together and agree on a way for everyone to live nicely together? But it’s not even as simple as that, because each of our personal journeys color our view of every event, small or large, and even if all of us learned from the exact same books and teachers we’d have different opinions about life.

What if there was just one big reset. When a phone glitches, turn it off and turn it on, right? Reboot, and it’s working fine again. So what if we humans were erased, and then when the dust settles and buries the proof of our centuries of folly, we re-enter the world? Would it all happen again? Would we know what to do this time?

When the air clears, there are ten of us - A Christian, a Muslim, a Jew, a Wiccan, a Buddhist, Atheist, etc. There’s an African, a Norseman, Iranian, Chinaman, Peruvian and Irishman, even maybe a Northwestern American gay hipster and a Confederate-born American hillbilly, (at the risk of sounding similar to a popular zombie show about survival). Ethnic groups and religions, each different, with different beliefs about how things should be done. Standing in awe of the mighty collapse, each of us not knowing how to do something that will be needed in order to survive, we each realize that one of the other nine knows the thing I don’t. We would have to work together in order to not only survive, but to make sure humans continue to exist and this time, preferably, in a new society filled with respect and a sense of family.

There is a story with many variations, the origin of which no one seems to know, about a man who was shown a group of people who dwelled in Hell, each of them sitting at a circular table that was covered with scrumptiously steaming dishes of meat, potatoes, soup, veggies and pasta on platters in the middle. Each person had a four-foot-long spoon, and he watched as each person scooped their spoon full of food, and then proceeded to try to eat it, but couldn’t! The spoon was so long that it wouldn’t reach the person’s mouth! He saw, then, that each person at the table was gaunt, pale, weak and groaning in starvation with all of this food in front of them.

Then he was shown a group of people who dwelled in Heaven. He saw the circular table, the same delicious food, the same number of people, and the same four-foot-long spoons. But everyone was plump, happy, and moaning with joy at the taste of the meal. Each person took their long spoon, filled it, and then reached across and fed it to a different person at the table. This is how they all stayed happy, satisfied, and even felt cared-for by someone else: by doing for the others what they could not do for themselves.

Doesn’t that sound like the way things should be? We all have the ability to do the best for others, so if the world rebooted, would we be able to do it right? This is where, in my thought process, I stop and sigh and shake my head. Because no, we would not. When the eclectic group of ten survivors comes to a valley with a river, and the Christian says God told her that they should cross the river, but the Atheist wants to feel safer in the trees on the hill at the top of the valley, the group will probably split. Like-minded will converge into two groups and continue in different directions. A difference in societies has now begun, and the views of the group with the Christian will be gone from the views of the group of the Atheist, and each will likely settle and raise generations with opposite life views that could clash as civilization grows in the new world.

Humans are so complex, that simply following rules that do the best for everyone isn’t going to be good enough. Some do well following a mindful and kind path, while deviating from the norm is how others feel their own worth in the world. Then there are the others who are TOO kind, enabling privilege rather than helping their community to learn from mistakes or overcoming challenges. We aren’t programmed robots. Many sci-fi stories have suggested a world of peace and perfection such as the Eloi people in H.G. Wells’ book “Time Machine.” But realistically, it can never happen. Even if we were scrubbed from the world to restart with a few of the wisest and most down-to-earth, rational and emotional leaders. This - today - what we have now with the overpopulation, prejudice, bigotry - it would happen again. So we need to just do our best to live with the complications of differences between people. After all, differences are what make us human.

A characteristic of the human element is: The Reason We Argue. The diversity, the uniqueness among us, the opposite opinions and experiences, that is why we are an intelligent species. The consequence of building intelligence, with the clashing and weaving of ideas and beliefs, is the loss of lives, nature, innocence, and faith. However, we can’t discount another characteristic of the human element: The Reason We Laugh. The differences that we argue about, the alternate opinions, unique experiences, they feed our sense of wonder and progress, and the intimacy and emotion that we all need in order to not just be human, but to feel human.

So I hear of fifty souls leaving this world in one in one horror-filled moment, and I am sad. I hear of one man feeling enough fear to take those souls on his own with such violence, and I feel pity. I think of how unexpected it was, how sudden, how unpredictable, and I feel fear for those I love because it could happen ANYWHERE at ANY TIME. I pray in my own way. And I move on. In the same spirit, I think that whether everyone has a gun, or no one gets a gun, it won’t matter. There will still be deaths either way because, first of all, there is no way to make absolutely sure that someone who shouldn’t have a gun, doesn’t get one, or that someone who doesn’t have a gun won’t use a knife or bomb, and second: killing is done without a gun. Instead of fearing the fate of gun possession, I concentrate on the good I can do in my own community and with my family, not dwelling in the issues I have no control over. I work on emitting goodwill and smiles, understanding and empathy, promoting life building habits and learning experiences. I keep praying in my own way. And I move on.

Sometimes moving on is all you are able to do.

#reboot #startingover #longspoon #apocalypse