The Point

I’ve had a hard time writing anything recently.

I did start a new hobby (recording) that I’ve discovered I enjoy even more than writing, if that were possible. I’ve been lax in my blog schedule in part because I’ve been recording instead.

I’ve had a hard time recording anything recently.

When it feels like the world might end any minute, it’s easy to despair. Easy to give up. Easy to start thinking, “What’s the point?” If whatever you make only lasts a few weeks or days or hours before everyone who could ever enjoy it vanishes forever, why bother?

I do what I can to earn the happy ending, the story that doesn’t end in the second act with all the heroes dead. It never feels like enough. Sometimes I feel guilty for not dropping everything else to focus my entire being on the problem, to abandon my family and possessions and join the proverbial mountaintop cloister. If the fate of the world really is at stake, wouldn’t that be the sane–the right–thing to do? I hear myself saying that I wouldn’t be worthy, that I’m helping more by just staying out of the way, but I don’t think I really believe that. So why do I keep living like everything’s normal?

Maybe it’s only selfishness and small-mindedness and fear talking, but…I think that would be missing the point.

It’s important to fight for the future, yes, and I’m not going to stop doing that. I’m going to keep thinking of ways I can help that might matter more, that play more to my strengths, that are more efficient. But I’m not going to stop living the life I still have in order to do it. I think that would be missing the point.

Even if everything we make gets erased tomorrow, it’s still worth making new things. Even if we only have a single day remaining on this Earth, it’s still good to work to make that day more beautiful. Even if we die tomorrow, it’s still right and proper to spend today living.

After all, living is what we’re working so hard to save in the first place.