Light Lessons

Today’s post is a writing challenge. This is how it works: participating bloggers picked 4 – 6 words or short phrases for someone else to craft into a post. All words must be used at least once and all the posts will be unique as each writer has received their own set of words. That’s the challenge, here’s a fun twist; no one who’s participating knows who got their words and in what direction the writer will take them. Until now.

 

My words are: gut-wrenching ~ greenhouse gas emissions ~ blue zone ~ womb ~ associated ~ spirit

It was submitted by: https://thethreegerbers.blogspot.ch/

                        __________________

I'm writing this journal from the womb that has become my home, a little underground bunker I worked a second job to be able to afford as soon as Donald Trump won his 4th term and nominated his sons to lead the country in case of his death and thereafter. I knew then that there was no hope left.

Probably should have realized that the first time with the mishandling of literally everything but especially the coronavirus and the looming reality of climate change. But I couldn't quite give up back then. I really thought any day people would wake up to how bad things had already gotten and would continue to get, but that time never came even as we died in astounding numbers from constant inaction and lack of adequate healthcare in various pandemics. Trump's flagrant misuse and outright theft of government funds in his later terms didn't help either.

It's gut-wrenching to think we could have stopped this. We could have put more research into the growing threat of novel viruses and super bacteria. We could have cut greenhouse gas emissions. We could have put stricter regulations on our military, our corporations, participated in the Paris agreement. We could have done anything, literally anything, but we chose profit over life, so now here we are at the end of ours. Collectively.

The end of humanity at least this go around...

Capitalism killed as so many of us said it would, and I hope if life happens again, those beings learn from our mistakes.

I live in what the United Nations named a blue zone in 2030. The various color schemes were meant to indicate how dangerous a zone would be for humans living above ground and without major protections. Red zones were coastal areas that essentially sunk into the oceans. Then orange, yellow, blue, and green.

I wouldn't even have to move to be safe in a bunker. Pro. I'd be underground the rest of my life with risky trips to get supplies or maybe healthcare if things continued on the same trajectory. Con.

I wouldn't have been able to save for a bunker AND a move so pros or cons really never mattered much. A move was never guaranteed as people emigrated en masse to those zones. Space was limited, and that came with other risks. Life underground would be my future if I chose to live long enough to see it through.

So here I am both loving and regretting being alive to experience this.

Life seems vastly more complicated in the grand scheme of things while the day to day stuff grew an inversely proportional level of simple. I grow a lot of my own food with grow lights in an off shoot of my bunker. I eat simpler, have less, and don't fight for a 9 to 5 to live paycheck to paycheck. There are no paychecks anymore. Life is fundamentally about substitence. The few people around me and I trade my cucumbers for their chicken eggs or something from my stores of booze and toys for some handmade socks. Bartering for necessities or small luxuries is an interaction I actually look forward to now instead of the existential dread I associated with a trip to the grocery store.

If it weren't for watching the world end, I think I'd be happier. That whole thing is sort of like a thorn in your foot though. Try as you might to forget it and keep moving on, it's always there to remind you with a little pain and potential infection. I'd be happier without the grief I feel for life as I knew it. It's never gone, but I still find myself smiling and at peace for more than I ever had time to do before.

So I guess what I really want to do with this journal from now until it's my time is show whoever comes next the true spirit of humanity without capitalism and money, to show that we do help one another. We do love and share and work. It doesn't have to be about winners and success because we can't win unless we all win, every last vulnerable one of us. I want to write down for all to see how we lived at the end, how we helped one another, how we grew into tighter communities and bigger families, and learned a different way of life, a better one. We're not lazy and unmotivated and greedy when there's system propping up those qualities as desirable and necessary.

Actually, I think we're the light. And I'm going to prove it.

                           ________________________


Links to the other “Use Your Words” posts:




Baking In A Tornado https://bakinginatornado.com/




Spatulas on Parade https://spatulasonparade.blogspot.com




Wandering Web Designer https://wanderingwebdesigner.com/blog




On the Border https://dlt-lifeontheranch.blogspot.com/




Part-time Working Hockey Mom https://thethreegerbers.blogspot.ch/




Sparkly Poetic Weirdo https://sparklyjenn.blogspot.com/




Climaxed https://climaxedtheblog.blogspot.com




Follow Me Home https://followmehome.shellybean.com