For most of my life, the prospect of the world ending has been a lingering fear in the back of my mind. The thought is nearly impossible to escape. From our media to our education system, it’s becoming common knowledge that existence as we know it is ending.
Of course, this fear is not irrational—I’ve taken a biology class. I know the parts-per-million of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere has reached uncontrollable levels, consistently breaking records. I know that species are dying at such a rapid rate that we may be witnessing the start of the sixth mass extinction. I know there are over 12,000 nuclear warheads around the world.
With that being said, as these issues go on, my fears are shifting. I am no longer afraid of the world ending—I’m actually starting to be concerned that it will never end.
While everyone is bracing for the apocalypse, I’m accepting that it’s already here, deteriorating my life in the form of an overflowed inbox. Each and every day, I face an unrelenting hoard of emails. No matter how many times I unsubscribe from Baskin Robbins—because of that one time I wanted 31 cents off—I always find them back from the dead. Y3K can’t come soon enough.
So far, I have prepared myself for the apocalypse but never once stopped to consider that, somehow, I may end up living a long life. I haven’t actually prepared by purchasing a bunker or a crank and I don’t have as many cans of beans as I should—but mentally? I’ve been preparing. I am less of a doomsday prepper and more of a doomsday acceptor.
Listen, I would love to hoard gold and precious metals for bartering around the wasteland, but I’m already too busy trying to survive day to day. As our population grows, rent is getting higher and my AC doesn’t battle climate change for free. My landlord hands me pieces of paper each month that are more terrifying than the Book of Revelations.
There are so many issues that I have to fight through all the time—sometimes every day. There are mornings when I wake up hungover, find my phone is not charged and that I’m also very late. So why would I ever want them to clean up the garbage island in the Pacific?
Every day that the Yellowstone Volcano doesn’t erupt, I find myself waiting for a bagel—twenty whole minutes, then another five minutes! And when the staff gives it to me, it’s just a plain, warm bagel without any cream cheese or toppings on it—because I like it that way.
Now my dear reader, if I was confident I was going to live a long healthy life in a stable world, do you think that I would waste my precious time waiting for a single stale donut? The answer is no—yet, here I am, caught between mundanity and catastrophe. Every year that we get closer to electric cars saving the world makes me more and more nervous that the mundanity will continue forever. It’s gotten to the point where I’m rooting for Exxon.
I exist in a world that is neither ending nor improving. Back in my day, straws were respectable tools and ice cubes lasted until dessert—but we’re trying, aren’t we?
Maybe our focus should be not on doomsday or when it will come—nor how. Doomsday is merely the chaotic accumulation of all the frivolous days we have lived. It’s too late to recycle—let mother nature wag her finger at us. If you can learn to be the chaos of today and embrace the mayhem, then maybe one day doomsday will, instead, fear you.