Published August 24, 2024

This Earth has been on my mind. So has the other one. Both.

The one I squeeze in times of stress. The one that squeezes me and gives me more stress. The one with systems designed to squeeze me out or even eliminate me and people like me. I can’t tell you about that here. I’m not allowed to talk about it. I’m not allowed to tell you why. My brain and my ability to share what’s in it might not belong to me as much as I once thought they did. So I squeeze a little more the Earth that fits into the palm of my hand.

But there’s the Earth that’s a one-way street, where everything is made to flow in one direction, squeezing more and more out of me for the benefit of the powerful, who mostly get to do as they wish, and who dare anyone to try to stop them. The air of infallibility grows thicker with such entitlement. Power corrupts, and absolute power corrupts absolutely.

We’ve seen scary violence by people who don’t know how good they’ve always had it blowing up and railing against all manner of faux threats manufactured to outrage them. We’ve seen the quiet, determined dignity of people who have never had it as good as those people, who have never enjoyed the same privileges, and who work for justice as they wait for light to emerge through the cracks. They do not smash windows, but instead wait for pressure and time to do the inevitable.

I see cracks. I see light. The old guard of assumed but increasingly unmerited power should be worried. Their time is almost up.

It’s our time, and even as the planet and its ice crack and melt and usher in a wave of more and more climate disasters, we can do what we can with what time we have left to make things better for as many people as possible. We do not have to surrender to the momentum of mediocrity and mean-spiritedness, of the white-knuckle grips of those trying to hold onto what’s slipping away from them with an inevitability that only the true, preordained power of how progress works, and is unstoppable, can signal.

Squeeze those stress balls. Squeeze your loved ones. Our time is nigh. Even if we are boats against the current, seemingly borne back ceaselessly into the past, we will soon have the chance to create a better future for however long it lasts, for each and everyone.