I confess to being terribly conflicted, when I look ahead and the it’s not because of the virus either. Frankly, there is absolutely no reason to look toward the future with any optimism, but no one wants to read about it either, let alone seeing it for what it is.

Around ten years ago, I latched on to something called peak oil. In some ways, it was really the beginning of the urgency regarding my take on the current environmental movement. The idea was pretty simple. It was going to become increasingly expensive to drill for oil and the prices would gradually increase to a point where it would cripple the international economy, causing dramatic changes in our global life style. I was quite passionate about it.

Many, many years before trying to make sense of the world, I was wrestling with my life, looking for meaning. I was drawn to Zen in my early thirties. My marriage had fallen apart. I reluctantly became a weekend father to my sons, feeling like I deserted them, shredding the beautiful connections, exquisitely nurtured between us. I began living on my own, moving through a handful of different locations within the City. Working in the broadcast advertising business was wearing me out, making me feel like I no longer belonged in that world, feeling painfully out of place.

Early in this journey, I began to grapple with my mortality and how to come to terms with life’s irrefutable limitations. It is over forty years later, still an ongoing internal dialogue. There are times when I feel as if I am truly at peace, understanding life has no beginning or end. It is a perfect poetry, filled with one metaphor after another. Over the decades, it has felt like having to learn a new language, a very private one. I know I have been incredibly fortunate, an accident of circumstance, affording me the time and focus to embrace how extraordinary this journey has been and continues to be. I am grateful beyond words.

I am pretty sure getting involved with the dilemma of peak oil was what got me looking seriously at the predicament of the world. It was the beginning of a serious internal conflict. I did not like what I saw all around me, while my personal path was growing sweeter and sweeter.

Today, I read a beautiful piece by Thich Nhat Hahn about the essence of life, letting go of fear and embracing the moment. There was a short poem within:

The Here and Now
I have arrived, I am home In the here, in the now I am solid, I am free In the ultimate I dwell

I just loved everything about it. He is one of the exceptionally rare people, here to the light the way in the darkness of our confusion about why we are here.

In the next moment, I read about Bangladesh and how they are suffering unspeakable hardships. Their ugly factories provide a huge percentage of the brand name clothes we wear. They earn around a hundred dollars a month. The virus has shut the factories down and they are now starving by the thousands.

I know everybody loves happy endings. I can’t think of a single reason to be optimistic about our future. Yes, I think it is important to fight for the Green New Deal and Medicare for All and other strategies to create a more equitable society, ones that attempt to ameliorate the damage caused by our hands.

However, it feels like manifesting small subplots in a much larger drama, the history of our remarkable species on this stage called earth. There is such a clear trajectory and I don’t understand why it is ignored. Actually, that is not true, but I will get there soon enough. The history of our civilization is rooted in the exercise of power, established and vanquished by violence, changing hands with each new pretender to the rented throne of superiority. We have become increasingly proficient, a tribute to our experience and a sharpening intellect. The pomposity of each pretender blinds them to the lessons of history.

You know, it is hard to look inside yourself, stripping away your bullshit, definitely not always liking what you see and then turn your hard, focused stare to the world around you. My small journey continues, periodically shaking hands with my mortality. I remember my outrage over peak oil and thinking if we came to terms with it, the world would be saved. The illusion is no different with today’s remedies, but I no longer feel the same.

As I have gotten older, I have become increasingly aware of my limitations. l am not nearly as strong as I used to be. I get pain where I never had it before and it can take months for it travel on and burrow into another part of my reluctantly, receptive body. My attitudes about so many things have changed, along with how I look at the terrible fallibility of our species.

Power rests in the hands of too few people and institutions. This has been a progression that began with the first, extra large, hairy guy, brandishing a club over the rest in his tribe. Today, this power leaves no visible marks on its victims, causing a suffering that many of us can’t even see, because it happens in places like Bangladesh. Blockades are put in place to punish governments, when it is all the citizens who are crushed by the deprivation. This world is gigantic and there are countries, whose names you’ve never even heard of.

I am saving the best for last. We have mortally ruptured the carrying capacity of this planet. While so many in the first world countries are fighting for a healthier environment, we are suffocating under the awful burden of our sheer numbers, but we never stop to look.

This continues to be my private conflict. This week, I sprung for a new iPhone. It came with ear buds, these weird little, shiny white pebbles. I got on my stationary bike and put these little wedges in my ears, placing my brand new, red phone into its secure place. Dylan came on, singing Let Me Die In My Footsteps, filling my head with his timeless eloquence. Right then, I was the words of Thich Nhat Hahn, gloriously happy.

There can be no peace in the world around me, but I am looking to find my moments.