I am a middle-aged woman raising a young family. Very young. One of my children is barely a month old. As I wake up to feed him in the middle of the night, I force myself to stay awake by scrolling through social media. Perhaps it is because news is at our fingertips or that we watch horrors unfold before our very eyes through our smartphones; but the world is decayed.
With every scroll, there is a video or a tweet or a picture that proves humanity has descended into anarchy. From wars, nukes, genocides to protests, governments being overthrown and countries burning down in the blink of an eye, it is just chaos as far as the eye can see. Sometimes I feel like we are in the opening scenes of a movie that is about people being infected by some strange virus that makes them act mad.
I have seen regular folks jump over the counters at fast food joints because their burgers were too cold or their soups too hot. They beat up service workers to express their complaints over food! Presidents are comedians, politicians are being killed in broad daylight, criminals have been emboldened and everyone is on the edge.
It’s not only the physical violence that makes me worry about the future. Simple things like chivalry being dead, too. Humanity is nonexistent. People will take out their videos to record you as you burn or bleed to death. Nobody will put out a helping hand when you fall. People hate people for being different. Everything is divisive: politics, religions, race, ideologies and even black and white things that are binary (either/or).
Even as parts of the world are burning, economies are collapsing and rumours of wars are floating around, some of us have to keep on living. We have to endure our daily battles of survival: pay rent, care for our children and afford food through inflation. As we try to keep true to our life paths and goals, I can’t help but consider all the uncertainty around us.
Why would I get a mortgage for a house when it could be blown into smithereens tomorrow? Why should I keep working like a dog to secure my children’s future when their future is literally in someone else's hand? All it takes is some power-hungry oligarch with a bruised ego to set off a nuke that would ignite World war III. Will I even live long enough to reap the fruits of my labour? Will my children get to enjoy what I am building for them through blood, sweat and tears?
The future is uncertain, I suppose it has always been. Especially for the Boomer generations who lived through the wars and the rebuilding of mankind. But for the rest of us who lived through a mostly peaceful time and technological advancements, this is a new experience for us. We don’t know how to live in the now but prepare for uncertain times. We have been raised as the generation who has to “keep your eyes on the prize” and when we fall off, to “dust yourself off and pick yourself up”.
But how long will we keep living for a future that we are not sure will come to pass? I find myself lost in the scramble of living and providing for my family while trying to build a better future for them, yet scared that this future might be taken away from them in the blink of an eye.
Perhaps this is the fate of all parents. We can’t help but worry for our children’s future. The future may be uncertain but what is certain is that we live in dangerous times. We have to live with the constant fear of the ticking time bomb. Anything can happen at any time.
