The World According to Kristen

     I've been waiting for things to change for a while now. The storyteller in me doesn't want to believe we went through a pandemic only to learn basically nothing. I realize that, in all likelihood, that's exactly what happened. The pandemic was a reminder, on a large scale, that the world doesn't care about us. Or rather, that the universe doesn't care about what happens to humanity. Even on earth, were only one out of thousands of species, if we die, someone will take over where we left off. No one wants to know that. So now we're trying our best to forget about it, to put it behind us, to pretend that it was just a fluke. 

     But whether or not it was just a fluke isn't the point. The point isn't that there's any inherent meaning in what happens to us, the point is that we take what happens to us and give it meaning. The act of living and making choices is an act of saying that those choices matter. And I don't like the feeling that we're forgetting it because it's easier than confronting the horrible truth that the universe at large doesn't care about us, not even as pawns. I don't like the idea that when confronted with the truth, all we know how to do is to plug our ears, not try to spin a different narrative, not try to find a way to grow from this awful experience, not remind ourselves that just because our world doesn't care about us doesn't mean that our choices don't have meaning or value. 

    Call me crazy, but I don't think our universe exists to protect us from the evil of other's if we follow it's whims. I don't even think our universe understands good and evil. All the universe is is a place we can change to suit our needs, something we do every day without realizing it. We use this power constantly, whether or not we're aware of that fact, and I for one think denying that fact is deeply irresponsible of us. I think it's important to remember that it's not just human's that do this, everything in our universe is doing this constantly. If the pandemic taught us anything, it's that we as people aren't powerless, our actions, or inaction, will affect the world whether we want it to or not. Society can't protect us from consequences, it can only give us plausible deniability.