“Our life is what our thoughts make it.”  Marcus Aurelius  121 AD-180 AD

I came up with a bit of a gimmick for this story. Earlier in the week, I thought I would pose a question in the title, one that was completely open ended in terms of what’d fit. I imagined going off on a riff or two about the complete, global denial of the climate catastrophe or our moral depravity in terms of ignoring the millions of starving children, a meal away from death all over the world. How could I forget the inexorable march from democracy to oligarchy? 

However, the plan changed when I learned about the Supreme Court’s gutting of Roe v. Wade. I quickly realized the conflict for me about this. It is inconceivable that any man could write about a woman’s right to privacy versus the government’s authority to make a preemptive determination, regarding the future of a fetus within.  

I can’t imagine what it must be like to not only know you are pregnant, but to actually feel your body adjusting, in order to accommodate and nurture the beginning of another being within your own. You could easily spend weeks puking your brains out, brought on by the most bizarre prompts. It’s a big deal to be the only one, who truly has the last say in the matter, the essence of freedom and it belongs to women.

From where I stand, this is the domain of the Queen. I honestly haven’t learned very much through all these years, but you bet your ass I have come to understand that the ladies have the power and they always have. The power to bear life, whether exercised or not, is a kind of creds us guys can’t touch. I tell you what, every man has been birthed by a woman and try as men might, there ain’t no getting away from it. Women have been viewed as a threat forever, at least from the time the patriarchy stole the crown from them.

The demise of Roe v. Wade is symptomatic of a far more sinister malaise, sucking the breath out of our future. It would be one thing if the Supreme Court ruling was some shockingly, isolated incident, but it is simply a reflection of our forever, blind march toward the precipice of our outlived welcome on this planet.  

I purposely picked that quote from Marcus Aurelius for two reasons. This dude was a Roman Emperor and his writing is unbelievable. His clarity is stunning and it is a rare combination to be the most powerful person of your era and at the same time, possessing a gifted mind and the ability to express it. Second, he was around nearly two thousand years ago, which seems like a long time, but it’s just a blink in the life of our planet.

I remember as a kid, learning about Darwin and the idea that there’s a progression in the evolution of life and we’re at the top of the ladder. Somewhere in there is this idea that we are going to continue to evolve over time, becoming a more perfect version of ourselves. The problem with this equation is that we have not been here long enough to have evolved much at all. 

Let’s say we have ruled the roost for around 100,000 years, a mere grain of sand in earth’s bottomless, hour glass. We don’t have an ounce of humility, it’s all about entitlement, because we are number one on that ladder of delusion. When we study the Roman Empire, there’s this idea that it was a long time ago, but it was really just yesterday. 

The sad truth is we are, who we have been and it doesn’t matter where you want to stop the wheel of human life, before you place your losing bet. The outcome will be what it always has been. The odds of that happening go up dramatically with any dominant society, like ours. Here, there is a gluttony of ego that is very contagious, dwarfing the sweet voice of our humanity.

If someone actually gave a shit about what I had to say, I’d say the abortion ruling is devastating for women in this country, a lightening indictment of the millions of years we have to go, before we deserve that top rung. So many of us are preoccupied with this selfish moment that we cannot see beyond our noses, a tragic circumstance. 

Every woman is in charge of her body. Clarence Thomas would be hospitalized in intensive care and heavily sedated if he felt his baby kick or his ankles swelling, let alone his whacked-out wife plotting to get him out of there, before his organs are harvested and put in pizza boxes, delivered by the illegitimate offspring of Jeffrey Epstein. 

There would be no human beings without women and it seems they should be exalted and not punished.

The Supreme Court ruling is incredibly tragic, but not at all surprising. It wasn’t all that long ago when America was selling itself as this magical place of freedom and opportunity that the entire world should emulate. It really hasn’t taken very long at all for that image to be shattered and sullied by the same stupid behavior of every goddamn empire that has come before this one.

We are dealing with a crisis of the human spirit, coming at a time when our future is at stake, brought about by the same myopic mindset as those six, black-robed charlatans. Without caring for each other, the future will not care about us.

Today is a very sad day.