The World on Fire

How do we think about this time? What do we say about it, to ourselves, to others?

Writers, especially, are prone to think about the details of what is happening to each of us. “Sit before that tree until you can describe how it is different from every other tree,” goes one piece of writing advice. Everyday ordinariness is our stock in trade.

There is nothing ordinary about a pandemic. It sweeps away normal life, or obscures it in fog. The virus now afoot ravages our imaginations in much the same way it does our bodies. We are as agitated and distracted as a wounded animal. Survival has become our principal focus.

And yet, even as distracted as we are, even as desperate to survive, unless we are actually sick, we are becalmed. Forced into unnatural isolation. Into contemplation, for the mind seeks, always. Even, or especially, when it is forced to be still.

In such times, it seeks to know why, to understand what it means for the future. We live in the future, even though it is only in our imaginations. We get ready for it by stocking up on flour and eggs and making plans for taking care of those dear to us.

Planning is not a choice. It is hard-wired into us as a highly adaptive evolutionary trait. Our stories are about grasshoppers and ants and little pigs who build their houses out of bricks.

In real time, planning is nothing more than living. We do it moment-by-moment, instinctively, until the moments add up and we see that our plan was good or bad and, if it was bad, we change it. We know there is a long term that we must prepare for, but we plan mainly in small, immediate ways. Another carton of eggs, another bag of flour. Mend the broken roof tiles. If there is some spare cash, set it aside in the children’s education fund. If not, do our best to teach them the things we know they will need to succeed: kindness, empathy. These more than the Pythagorean theorem (which we’re a little vague on anyway, so how important can it be?).

This why we write about everyday life. Because it is where life lives. It is where the species survives or dies. The details of how we live tell us who we are. So that others may know us and themselves, those are the stories we share, even when it seems the world is on fire.

The Man Who Didn't Cry Wolf

Once upon a time there was a man who thought only of himself.

“You should think of others,” someone must have told him once, perhaps when he was young, when it was still safe to tell him things he didn’t want to hear.

As he grew older, when he was told something disagreeable, he just refused to believe it. 

“That’s not true,” he would say. If he was told again that it was true, he got angry. No one wanted to be around him when he got angry, so his circle narrowed to those who always told him what he wanted to hear. Which was only good news.

Naturally, he believed them. And because the news was always good, and told to him, of course he began to see that he himself was the cause of the good news. Over time, it became an article of faith to him that bad news would mean he had failed, unimaginably, to cause it to be good news.

No one wanted to tell him he had failed, so no one told him bad news.

Bad news was not only withheld from him, he was protected from its consequences. He had a huge staff of servants eager to do his bidding, because he paid them very well. They made sure he never heard the bad news, and that it never hurt him.

The bad news did hurt others though, and they threatened to tell him about it. So his servants had to work especially hard not only to not let the bad news be conveyed to him, but to convince anyone who might tell him that it wasn’t bad news at all, it was good news, and they should be thankful that he was the source of it. 

If anyone wasn’t thankful, they were dealt with. Many of them were deported or otherwise banished from his presence. The ones who couldn’t be deported or banished, at least not yet, were discredited. They were called out as heretics, and the faithful, the true believers, turned on them and silenced them.

He began to believe he was not only infallible but also invincible. He ordered his servants and all others who came in contact with the public to humiliate and destroy anyone who opposed him.

One day, the wolf came. He had not cried wolf, like the boy in the story, because he did not believe wolves existed. No one had dared tell him they did. So when the wolf cornered him in his bedroom, he was completely unprepared. He was defenseless. 

It’s not known whether he put up a fight. There was nothing left of him by which to judge whether he had been valiant or cowardly. He had had no practice at being either, shielded from reality as he had been all his life. 

His remains, such as they were, were found in a corner, regurgitated by the wolf, which had apparently found him unappetizing. Of course, were he still alive, no one would dare tell him that.