This could get ugly
I thought it was shameful enough that while I was in Europe the powers that be in the great U.S. of A. (can we still even call it great) were having a Battle Royale over the debt be it the ceiling or the floor, and yet when Standard and Poor’s downgraded the US credit and China, our largest creditor went all dragon fire on us, I just thought, oh here we go. This is going to get ugly.
I’m ever thankful that in the last three years during my summer vacations, I have prepared myself mentally for the challenges that lay in wait like a super sized cockroach ready to march over my grave. The summer of 2008, I read You Can’t Go Home Again by Thomas Wolfe, prescient? Downright frighteningly real is what I have to say. In 2009, I gave myself over to the fantastical worlds of David Mitchell having devoured Cloud Atlas which paints a picture of a world that is filled with heroes and villains and where lots of new technology is no more vapid than the humans creating it. I read the Power of Now in 2011 and thankfully so because it girded me for the damn laughable fact that my son’s school plans went up in smoke in mere minutes after receiving a phone call from the hysterical new school marm – all I could think of was we are not living with deus ex machina but rather Krishna’s Lila – we, the people, the divine fodder for the gods.
Meanwhile, I read an engaging snippet in the Sunday NYT today that is worthy of a read and re-read by Peter Sims who writes about taking chances in your life and also creating your life. My favorite requote from his is Alan Kay saying, “The best way to predict the future is to invent it.” There are plenty of cookie cutter molds out there for you to try to mold yourself into but I’ve found only the blandest cookies come out of those molds – it’s those people (and I hope to be one) who are free formed and in a constant state of free falling that prove to be the tastiest morsels out there.
But the main point of all this is it is going to get ugly, but remember this too shall pass.