I can admit it, I’m afraid.  I watch my wife, my sons, guys I play tennis with, they act like they are not scared of about the current health crisis.  They talk about cancelled events, social distancing, and even impacts on each individuals daily life.  Each doing their best not to be fearful about what is coming.  Mostly people are shocked and emotionally overreacting, they buy toilet paper and chicken like the end of times are coming.  It seems that no one wants to talk about what is really going on.

The idea that this situation was created by a lazy world population and governments that have lost focus of people’s daily lives evades discussion and hate and fear take it’s place.  My life was disrupted after college and I have been trying to deal with a harsh world where my health and welfare were no concern to both family and the general population.  So I started looking at the world differently.  I watched in horror as the beautiful blue planet was ravaged by careless capitalists.  The pursuit of money became more important than kindness, the ecology, our food supply, personal freedoms, and more. 

As a science teacher in the 1990’s, I taught about the delicate food web and that all things are connected somehow.  I showed that what happened on the other side of the town, the country, and even the world has become more and more connected to our daily lives.  I knew a small number of individuals that shared my world view and they too adjusted their lives.  They traveled less, lived simply, gardened and grew veggies, and concerned themselves with the impact they had on the Earth. 

I changed, I adjusted, but more importantly, I became afraid!  Each cruise outbreak of disease, each record high temperature at the North Pole, and the time I got food poisoning, I became fearful of what was going on around me.  My parents didn’t care and eventually decided not to talk to me again.  For them, the years left were the only thing of importance.  The life of my children, or my future didn’t matter to them.  I was left alone, and everything promised to me was taken away.  This forced more changes in the way I acted and created a space around me, a distance that society kept away from me. 

Each crisis, I was glad my wife had a family that helped us or we would have been on the street.  We made the most of everything, finding the best and least expensive ways to do everything.  My work life was disrupted and I found it impossible to find work.  Simultaneously, my home was damaged by the flood that accompanied Super Storm Sandy.  The next three years were spent trying to get our flood insurance company to pay the claim.  We adjusted, and our lives shrunk again.  Each dollar got budgeted, and the lurking fear of foreclosure and financial ruin was ever present.  We were afraid, but we never gave up.

The arthritis in my hips became so painful that a hip replacement was the only answer.  I replaced the left hip, hoping the right one would hold up.  Unexpectedly, my attention to my diet, health, and fitness had an unexpected benefit, I walked out of the hospital less than 24 hours after surgery, and was playing tennis 6 weeks later.  The rehabilitation was incredibly hard and full of extreme pain.  I had moments of heart stopping fear that I would never again be fit or well enough to garden, play tennis, or do anything without pain.  Lucky that fear and I were old friends, so we worked together to work myself back to full health, and even superior in many ways. 

So I welcome the world to my fear. Now you know what I have been living with and you see what I have been talking about for decades.  The safe veneer of safety has been stripped and now you too are afraid.  Fear can’t kill you, it is a natural reach to danger.  America and the world is now in danger,  time to pull together and change things while we still can.  I bet for each of you to adjust to the new reality, we here in America are BROKE and even worse, we are a trillion dollars in debt.  WE CAN CHANGE!  I have written many blogs about things that individuals can do today to improve the ecology, the economy, and the community that you live in.  Use your fear, there is still time to do something!