Then he said to them: 'Nation will rise against nation, and kingdom against kingdom. There will be great earthquakes, famines and pestilences in various places, and fearful events and great signs from heaven.'"
-Luke 21: 10-11
Sitting here dealing with a legal issue of great import ahead of yet another Rule 7.1 "meet and confer" call in that miserable case I took over from my ill partner. He and the disagreeable little twit on the other side participated in a deposition that spanned 340 rambling pages, with thirty-six separate objections that mostly descended into ad hominem appendage waving matches between the two esteemed jurists. It is kindergarten playground stuff, but the lawyer on the other side has suggested he'll file a motion with the court to sanction our side for my partner's role in the scuffle. This would be a mistake, but I'm stuck defending our team all the same.
So no, there is no "great import" to this morning's waste of breath and life. It's just more stupid lawyer antics. My world.
Meanwhile, the world outside our law bubble continues to fall apart rather smartly. But that's not my focus this morning. What's fascinating in the midst of all this is the reaction of collective humanity, ranging from denial to a gritty determination to get on with something resembling our past "normal" life despite the increasingly dangerous and complicated implications of that exercise.
In Kharkiv, young people meet for coffee as rockets rain down overhead.
People miss their old lives, and want nothing more than to return to the business of living rather than cowering in the subway tunnels-turned-bomb shelters, as they did during the spring.
And in western Europe, the hottest summer ever kills thousands in a land mostly without air conditioning.
The text of the story sounds pretty bad--Portugal and our beloved Brittany are on fire, streets are buckling, London set a record high temperature . . .
but look at the photos in the article. Tourists stroll the Thames and crowd in front of the departure signs at King's Cross. A cyclist rides her bike down an Amsterdam street. Young ladies douse their feet in the fountain at Trafalgar Square. Life goes on, despite the climate disaster unfolding in our midst.
Closer to home, another Covid wave breaks over us, but with almost no one dying or requiring hospitalization the tenor of life around me here in Panama City looks about the same as it did five years ago. Almost no masks in public, restaurants bustling. I'm the only one in the gym still wiping down the equipment with disinfectant, based on my informal review this morning. Life goes doggedly on.
I won't go into politics. That's not good, either. And yet I saw an article on Drudge the other day that suggests our national reaction to all the acrimony and divisiveness has been marked by a big reduction in folks following the news. I've noticed it around here. The outward signs of political militancy are mostly missing these days, the banners and the in-your-face signs. People are too busy trying to live their lives and put food on the table. Have you seen the price of hamburger these days? Who cares about a little insurrection?
This is the way though, isn't it? Things change around us, often for the worse. We note the change, maybe we complain, and then we adjust. A new normal emerges around rocket attacks in Kharkiv that may interrupt a kaffeeklatsch, searing heat that teaches northern Europeans why their "lazy" southern neighbors have long availed themselves of an afternoon siesta, an endemic disease that means there will be days when co-workers will be unavailable when they catch Covid for the fifth time, the loss of a civil right you thought you had yesterday that disappears today with the stroke of a judge's pen. It may not be the world we hoped for at this moment in history, not by a longshot, but it's the world we've been given, and as that bard of the prairie Jerry Jeff Walker put it, "a man must carry on."
It's something that seems baked into the fabric of human life. I've reached an age marked by physical and mental decline. Tasks I approached with ease become a struggle, the markers of being a man in my prime are gradually sanded away in this sirocco of adult life. And this path only leads in one direction. There won't be a second wind or an Indian Summer. Cocoon was just a movie.
But I'm strangely okay with all that. I sort of wish P was married to the dashing young fighter pilot with the 28 inch waist, but she's got me, got the best I have to give at this moment in my life, which is still pretty good. One adjusts, accepts the old world has passed away, reconfigures life to face the inconveniences and insults of the day. It's not so bad; in fact, it might be the greatest thing about humanity. We adapt.
This morning's sunrise brought an image to the west that felt like a metaphor for the impending storms all around us. Terrifying and beautiful at the same time.
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