People Burn the World

Last night after the third pitch in the World Series, I looked at my youngest son and said, “the game is over.” Naturally, he challenged me. It is impossible for me to know if the game is over because, I am not a sports person, I don’t understand all the rules of baseball and many other reasons that he came up with to protest my perspective. I’ll tell you a little of what I saw and why I believed I was right. I did not know ahead of time any other information and I don’t know baseball statistics or psychology of the players. In fact, if you would have asked me a few days ago, I would have said based on my limited information that Yankees sweep.

The moment I saw the Yankees pitcher throwing balls favorable to the Dodgers, I realized that unless the Yankees make a change immediately, it would cost them. Most of the Yankees line up looked visibly shaken or something was off for them, and I could see it when they went to bat. These two things together looked consistent. Once I could see that behavior wouldn’t change and leadership didn’t get involved until it was too late, I believed they would lose.

They could have won, they could have come from behind, they could have done a lot of things. I wasn’t seeing it. They lost. I wouldn’t close the door on them yet but with them coming to NY, maybe there is some opportunity. I’ll only have a sense after the first inning of the next game.

I am not a fortune teller, I don’t have a crystal ball, I can’t predict the future with specific accuracy, but I can see patterns and understand information that people transmit from behavior and put this information together to see likely outcomes.

There are aspects we can see as long term and obvious short term. When it comes to the world, people I know have great anxiety about this presidential election. Given the choices that we supposedly have and the things that are out of our control, it makes sense to just observe and understand potential outcomes. The fact is your vote doesn’t matter. If the people had any real influence on who was a candidate, that would be amazing as well.

Just put things into perspective, we have world dictators today in our modern world. We have slavery, drug trade, legal and illegal prostitution, child labor. We are collectively making the world uninhabitable to humankind; we are releasing methane and trapped gases. We are heating the world to the point that scientists are screaming desperately for attention. Yeah, we are literally watching people destroy the world we live in. Honestly, what is the expectation of you? What are you going to do about it?

We live in a world of lunacy. Think about this for a moment. If you turn on the radio and listen to a common popular song, you’ll hear anything, and it is ok because it is creative. Yet, people today are not allowed to say certain words because they are offensive. Boys can be girls and girls can be boys if they just say so. One country decides it wants to take over another and the world is like “oh, that’s messed up” but basically just watches like street kids enjoying an old lady being robbed.

People burn the world for various reasons. Some people believe that killing themselves for a cause is honorable. Some people believe that suicide should be illegal as the kill themselves slowly with cigars and whiskey. Just think about that for a moment. You may believe that suicide is wrong but what actions are you taking right now to kill yourself slowly that you know about but still do. Is killing yourself slow and painful ok but quick and possibly painless wrong? This is the world we live in.

A world full of contradictions and paradoxes, where we aim for progress but frequently fall short. We are essentially witnessing both the beauty and potential of the world and humanity, as well as the chaos and destruction.

While we have choices, options and opportunities to make a difference, the outcomes are very complicated to understand. You can personally have a butterfly effect on the world that is the equivalent of a footprint in the sand. Isn’t this what we all are anyways?

The thing to keep in mind is that the world will be fine in the end, it is humanity that may not make it. If you want to have anxiety about something, consider that we are capable of total human annellation right now and we can’t stop it even if we wanted.

That said, we do have ability take action in our own lives as we observe the rest of the world. What are you going to do?