How Do You Know When You Are Living In An Apocalypse?

This was going to be the Great Re-Entry. After a frightening road trip, I saw it’s not re-entering. It’s readjusting to a new abnormal.

Photo by Joseph Chan on Unsplash

I always thought I would know, for sure, because, you know, it’s the apocalypse and the smoky ash world will be drained of all color and Mad Max guys are roaring around on their motorcycles and there’s nobody else on the planet but the zombies that wander around pounding on boarded-up houses in the suburbs. Plus, I always thought the apocalypse would have a distinct before and after, marked by a big, human-made bang.

But I didn’t imagine the end of our world would come as a slow slide into something also dreadful, but elusive, a sleight-of-hand that at turns have you believing, any day now, you’re going to get your life back as you knew it. You’ll return to that time that looks once again like when you were a child born in the last millennium, growing with the turn of steady seasons, with their spring showers, sparkling summer pools, autumn leaves, snow days, woven throughout with festivals and carnivals, family gatherings and county fairs. These days, if we get a celebratory day like this it is fraught and tenuous. Even the happy, communal days feel like their own endangered species, what remains of an…