May 22, 2011

 
 
     Well, no, it didn't.  End, that is.  The world, that is.  Earthquakes everywhere, they predicted, at 6PM local time on Saturday, May 21st.  The saved--a group I was sure would not include me--whooshed up to heaven, the rest of us left to suffer and die until the planet finally disintegrated this coming October.  But no.  No quake, no heavenward whooshing, the morning after was much like the one before.
 
     So now, I guess, we go back to the real stuff--can we keep from blowing up the planet (we have that power now)?  Can we lessen hunger?  Or poverty?  Or misery?  All the old questions remain.
 
        Most of us, I suspect, will want to try regardless of our race or nationality.  We have made some progress.  Not enough, of course.  But surely there is less wretchedness in the world now than there was a century or two ago.  It's a struggle we will never win, of course, but one we must continue to wage.
 
     "And so we beat on, boats against the current, borne back ceaselessly into the past." (F. Scott Fitzgerald – "The Great Gatsby")