There is no mystery, or surprise in things to a person who sees the world. A human life is a celestial one, just on a smaller scale.
The collapse that occurred, the Hurricane that found a mainland, and the hatred that hijacked four jets announced themselves in the moments that became the static complacency that ordered them. If you see the world, what you see is balance, and balance is dependent upon consistent shifts. The individual life of any one of us will be judged by the tilt of our scale. The question that measures all of us doesn't ask if we were pure. It asks if what we retained of our purity outweighed the frailty that couldn't protect it.
The anthropomorphic nature of Humans often injects humor, or satisfaction, where there is none. For example, it's funny to watch a dog spin in circles before it lies down. Who cares if it's a hardwired, fixed action pattern performed by all members of the species. It's stupid, and stupid usually equates to funny. And there's Icarus. We tell his story for, and shake our heads at, the hubris that sent him into his tragic, and fatal, tailspin.
The Naming Trail
To survive the world the place you occupy within it must remain in proportion to the influence you have upon it. Icarus exceeded his. The collapse I experienced 8 years ago wasn't a collapse at all. It was a shift of balance. You can't change the spot you hold without first changing the person who holds it. The Native Americans of the Salish tribe new that, and established a ritual called a "Naming Trail" to enforce its awareness.
If you see the world you know that everything in it is in a constant state of flux, and the best chance you have at thriving is found in the giving in. Most Humans, however, have all but deified the principle of obtaining 'security' through their rigorous attempts to impose it. The Salish were an exception.
When a child was born into the tribe it was given a name by its parents. This first name was usually a virtue, or trait, the parents wished upon their child. This name was replaced sometime during the child's adolescence by a name given by the tribal leader at a ceremony called the Jump Dances. This second name would signify a gift, or strength, for which the child had become known. When the child transitioned into an adult it would receive a third name. This name would reflect an expectation, or something similar, for the adult to live up to. When an individual monitors the internal shifts that occur, and participates in a ceremony of renaming to acknowledge them, a collapse is unlikely. It's unlikely because it's allowed to diffuse the building pressure, and recognized as something different.
A Microcosm of Repetition
I've noted a settling, or a shift in things since I began writing The Dying Year. It's taking place inside me, and in the world around me. I'm paying more attention to what I inhabit because of it. Part of behaving authentically is the acceptance of events that occur in one's life as single, individual raindrops. They don't amount to anything on their own. The sense that they make won't be known until they accumulate in a still pond, or the ferocity of a raging river. No sense will be made of either if no time has been spent watching the world.
It's not without irony that the plague of our era is Cancer, and Cancer is one's own body destroying itself. It's the hubris of the individual cell as it reproduces with so little balance that it destroys the host that sustains it. It's a microcosm of the larger world that we inhabit, all 7 billion of us, as we multiply beyond the worlds resources.
There is no such thing as a collapse. There's lack of vision. There's pride. There's inequity. There are things that lead to a collapse. If one occurs it's nothing more than a raindrop shifting the tide toward balance.
