The Radical Realization of a Universal Truth
How much control do you believe you have?
We sit to read the news because we’re hungry for outside information. We want to confirm our daily biases. We enjoy learning that we’re right. We’re validated when we read that people and things we don’t like are wrong, or getting punished, or suffering consequences.
Most stories are written from templates. The names, dates, and places change, but the arc is the same. We’re numb to the specifics, and we gloss over the generalities.
But every once in a while, a writer will paste a universal truth, tuck it somewhere in the paragraphs, maybe even out of place within the flow of the story.
It brings us pause.
Today I found one, nested in a story, under the headline, below the introduction, into the details that such a small percentage of readers take the time to unearth. But there it was.
“… and realizing that your life can be radically changed by massive forces you neither control nor fully trust.”
I like the way it’s phrased. But it strikes me that statement isn’t specific to what the story was about. That statement is true of everything, at all times, in all places.
The trouble is that anyone would ever think anything other than that. Every moment of life is so complex. There’s never a millisecond that some uncontrollable, untrustworthy, massive force isn’t bearing down on you.
Do you believe that something, anything that you do is more of a factor in your life than all of the infinite number of things that you aren’t doing? Instability is the final bedrock.
And then you’re shocked when a human across the globe pulls the plug on your safety net? Openly, brazenly, without sympathy or empathy? That human held your livelihood within the motion of a pen stroke? And you’re surprised?
Chaos was held back with duct tape and bubble gum. Misery and death have been barking at the gates for generations. You planted seeds in no man’s land. You prayed for rain, and it gushed. But the sky was going to cry anyway. The timing of your prayers was a fluke. And now you pray for rain again, and instead, radioactive dust comes glittering down from heaven, dropped from the wings of a machine of war.
It’s too late to run.
For you, and you, and all of you, and the rest of you. This situation isn’t your fault, and it’s not fair. That you would ever hope for peace and calm between one bloodthirsty year and another comes from your mental disorder. You aren’t entitled to control your destiny. You never were, and you never will be.
You built a barn on the floor of the world’s deepest ocean, and you don’t know why it’s wet. You dug the space for a swimming pool in the desert; the only thing to dive into is sand-colored disappointment.
Your life’s work, your blood, sweat and tears, your plans, your collected belongings, the fruits of your labor — gone in a blink. And not even in your blink. In someone else’s. A collection of blinks from a collection of humans who don’t know you and don’t care about you.
At best, you might end up a statistic in another story. You might be a ‘1.’ Or, maybe your family could be a ‘3,’ ‘4,’ or ‘5.’ Maybe you’re a part of a group of a greater number.
‘917.’
‘250,000.’
But as those numbers get bigger in a story, you mean less. The proportion of effort that it takes to care about you as an individual diminishes, marginally.
But you still mattered, right? You had that revolutionary realization before it was too late.
“… that your life can be radically changed by massive forces you neither control nor fully trust.”
Does this suggest that life is joyless, or not valued? No. The opposite, really.
But you’d better be ready to pack up tent stakes in a hurry, because you’re on your own, and no one will help you.
