Wednesday, November 9, 2016

Riding Ahead of The Curve

    Now that the election is past, I am hoping that the chaos between friends will settle back to something resembling normal. Okay, I am sure it will be a new normal. Things have been said between some that cannot be unsaid, though I am hoping time will heal wounds.
    Looking ahead, I have no idea what the eventual ramifications will be. But that can be said of any action, on any given day. No one, not one of us, can know what tomorrow will bring. Sure, we all have our lives planned out to some degree. We know, mostly, when to get up, when to head off to work, when the clock tells us it is time to go home. This is but a bare structure. Ephemeral. Subject to change without notice. Because of this, I try to keep my spiritual books balanced. Also, because of this, I try to think ahead, possible scenarios, what to do, what to keep on hand. I don't want to be caught off-guard and in a lurch. On a motorcycle we call this "riding ahead of the curve."
    Riding Ahead of The Curve. What does this mean? It means being prepared for what you can't see. Keeping eyes up, head on a swivel, and looking as far up the road as you can see. It is easy to get caught up in the immediate here and now, only seeing what is immediately beneath your wheels. It is just as easy to get carried away by all the possibilities of what we can't see, what is beyond the curve. We do not know what the next four years will bring, or the ramifications it will have on the years to follow. But that can be said of every election, just as it can be said of every decision in our lives.
    Am I disappointed with the outcome? Yes. Am I stressed and anxious? Yes. Am I freaking just a bit? Absolutely. But there is not jack shit I can do about it. I fact checked. I waded through the murk. I didn't allow myself to be swayed by memes and rumors swirling about with the intent of firing people's base emotions. I voted. There is nothing I can do now to change the events of yesterday. What I can do is manage how I will react to them. I know I can't change the past. Nor can I do much to change the events that will come about on a national and international level. What I can do is remain calm, not panic, keep doing what I am doing to keep my life moving forward. That is all any of us can do, on any given day, under any circumstance.
    I think much of this election was based on fears and frustrations that have been going on so long that we have internalized them to the point that we don't even realize they are there, It is that internal sense of impending doom that we can't seem to shake. The feeling of living on the edge of a deep, dark abyss. I don't know that our world is any better or worse off than it was 10 or 20 years ago, or 40 years. But now with the immediacy of the internet, and the herd mentality of social media, we are all the more aware of every little event that transpires around the world. We see, in gory detail, small events from the other side of the globe, that we would not even have known about a few years ago. But now they are in our faces, in all their macabre glory, over and over, with increasingly emotional posts as people react and over-react. We have become a world full of drama. fear, and maybe too much information and not enough knowledge. We are all living with a level of PTSD from the barrage of images we see every single day. And we are unable to do anything about it. The frustration level builds to boiling point. That is where we have landed. Now, we have a number of years to see just where it is we have landed, and what these decisions will mean to all of us over time.
    So, for now, I will keep on doing what I am doing. Keep calm. No Panic. Move forward as best I can, and wait to see what will happen. It is all I can do.