Off Kilter

 

The world seems to be completely off kilter. You feel it, don’t you? It’s as if the earth has come off its axis, spinning backwards into a darker era.

I used to have one of those globes that you spun around. This was in the days before countries changed, split up, divided and became new countries faster than you could say Herzegovina. Occasionally the spinning globe (because I would spin it quite fast and vigorously) would become unhinged. Easily fixed. Click. Everything back in place.

If only it were so easy today. Not so.

There are no easy answers or fixes after the years of COVID, gun violence, war, racism, senseless killings and now, turning the clock back on women’s rights. No easy answers to any of it.

And even as we tentatively emerge out of COVID, we cannot simply return to the way it was before, as much as some people wish to eagerly proclaim—oh yay, now I can go back to living my life as I did before.

Nothing returns to how it was before an upheaval. Not in nature nor in society. People don’t emerge from life-changing situations unchanged. Not unless they’re oblivious, or wish to be. I am unmoved (and frankly, annoyed) by those who preach platitudes of ‘Live life to the fullest’, ‘Happiness is a choice’, ‘Just be positive’ and other simplistic, meaningless recitations of quotes in a one-positive-size-fits-all-hard-situations generalization.

People have changed. They’ve made difficult, or not so difficult, thoughtful, or thoughtless choices. They’ve divided, taken a stand, and in the process, revealed themselves, their values as well as their biases. It’s the same with every other upheaval that has come our way: division and the revelation of an ugly underbelly that we sensed was there but didn’t want to believe it to be true.

What we value speaks volumes about who we are.

One could hardly blame Mother Nature if she were to say, “Enough of this, you idiots. I shall handle this.” And click—everything back in place.