America’s National Pastime isn’t baseball.
Or even football (actually it is football, but for the purposes of this blog it’s not football).
America is obsessed.
Obsessed with fear. Devastation. Death.
We seem to have a need to be scared all the time.
We aren’t happy unless we are 97% sure the world is ending.
My theory is this slippery slope began with Y2K.
Then it was amplified during the Iraq War.
Since then, we find all kinds of reasons to be depressed and frightened.
If banks are in trouble, the world is going to end.
If schools don’t change, the world is going to end.
If a Republican or Democrat is elected President, the world is going to end (depends how you vote).
If it’s going to snow or rain, it is likely to be the storm to end all storms. And the world is going to end.
Winter isn’t winter unless we get 3 inches of snow and our entire society rushes to the grocery store to buy their last meal.
The Weather Channel now names each and every storm just so we will be more scared. A storm is scary. Storm "Jim Bob" is scarier.
You DO NOT want "Jim Bob" snowing in your front yard!
It sprinkles and the wind blows and people act like the world is on fire and their only way to survive is to purchase one more loaf of bread. Or gallon of milk.
We are a mess.
We "overworry". We overmedicate because we overworry. And we seem to find a strange amount of joy in both.
Stop it.
Grow up.
The world was here before we arrived and it will be here long after we leave it.
We just aren’t that important in the bigger scheme of things.
Actual life isn’t a soap opera or a reality television show.
Actual life is sort of boring.
That’s the way it’s been for thousands of years and that’s the way it should be.