Today I wonder what the right questions to ask are. What I mean is what questions will lead me to truth. To living better. To being a better person. Maybe even to being a better writer.
The first question I have asked is this: Why do I continue to not put in the work necessary to change from my current job that is quite literally destroying my body?
Laziness is the answer I give, but even that answer is lazy. Fear, I think drives part of the reason I stay where I am. I'm afraid to change, afraid that if I dream and don't reach my dreams that I will be crushed.
So I continue to wander in a desert that I know, even though it is getting dryer, and I'm daily less able to survive or leave the desert.
Then there is the panic porn that is being purveyed on our society with regard to COVID. Why?
What reason is there for the government to continue to push the panic button this far into the course of this issue? I read a column that said we ought to declare victory and stop all the panicking.
I'm more of the opinion that we have to admit a qualified defeat. That is that we have to admit that we will not ever be free from SARS-COV2 (AKA COVID 19) as it is now free and infecting people and mutating at a rate that one would expect from a virus. So it will continue to elude us, some will die from it. Some will die from auto accidents this year. To continue to live a full life one needs to be willing to accept a certain level of risk. I hope I live a long life. But more than that I hope I live a full life, that I learn to face my fears and move on to a new and better job, whatever that may be. I hope I find something that doesn't leave me so exhausted that I can't write after I get done with it. I hope I find something that doesn't require enough processing power that I can't think and imagine new stories (even if they never get written or published) and I hope that I can finish something well enough to believe that it is worthy of asking for money from readers for it.
Finally I leave you with this:
"Of all tyrannies, a tyranny sincerely exercised for the good of its victims may be the most oppressive. It would be better to live under robber barons than under omnipotent moral busybodies. The robber baron's cruelty may sometimes sleep, his cupidity may at some point be satiated; but those who torment us for our own good will torment us without end for they do so with the approval of their own conscience. They may be more likely to go to Heaven yet at the same time likelier to make a Hell of earth. This very kindness stings with intolerable insult. To be "cured" against one's will and cured of states which we may not regard as disease is to be put on a level of those who have not yet reached the age of reason or those who never will; to be classed with infants, imbeciles, and domestic animals."
C.S. Lewis