I stay incredibly stressed. I do the job of two people at The Automotive Free Clinic. I’m the lead tech and I’m the executive director. My days are filled with both worrying about the long term direction of our little shop and our mutual aid and educational network and of worrying about customers cars, which sometimes are quite difficult to diagnose. I try not to make mistakes but I do from time to time. I just try to make those mistakes right.
In a lot of ways, I’m very blessed and I probably shouldn’t be complaining. I don’t lack for anything, food, clothing, shelter, and even the ephemeral things like love, community, and friendship. I live a life of significance. I’m preparing a talk for early September at Berkeley and at Highlander Research and Education Center, two venerated institutions for innovation in leftist thought.
But, being significant can be a burden and stressful. You’re constantly questioning whether you can live up to the expectations that others set for you, but in my case, it’s the expectations that I set for myself. I strive to be great. I’m a great writer and thinker, but damn working on cars is so fucking difficult compared to peeling off a blog post in 15 minutes. It’s literally the hardest thing I’ve ever done and I’ve done a lot of shit.
I never struggled in higher education. It was so easy to me. Learn and write, learn and write, rinse repeat. I never learned the politics of it, which I guess was the hard part and the reason my academic career flamed out. But, damn, I can learn.
Anyway, that’s not what I’m really writing about. I watched this show on National Geographic. It was just nature, the beauty, power, and wonder and it stirred me to tears. We’ve destroyed a lot of it, but the thing about it is that it will still be here when the human species is long gone, whether that’s in 250 years or 250 million years, nature will still be here. Hell, it grows through my concrete sidewalk.
We are insignificant. The Earth is 4,600,000,000 years old. The human species has been around for what 500,000 of those years. A blip, a rounding error. The universe itself is 14 billion years old. There are between 3 million and 100 million species of living beings on planet Earth and humans are just one, one in 100 million. We are truly insignificant in the face of the vastness of the universe and of time itself. We live, what, 80 years, maybe 100. It’s nothing - the bat of a butterfly wing.
The Bible says “Therefore I tell you, do not worry about your life, what you will eat or drink; or about your body, what you will wear. Is not life more than food, and the body more than clothes? Look at the birds of the air; they do not sow or reap or store away in barns, and yet your heavenly Father feeds them. Are you not much more valuable than they? Can any one of you by worrying add a single hour to your life[a]?
“And why do you worry about clothes? See how the flowers of the field grow. They do not labor or spin. Yet I tell you that not even Solomon in all his splendor was dressed like one of these. If that is how God clothes the grass of the field, which is here today and tomorrow is thrown into the fire, will he not much more clothe you—you of little faith? So do not worry, saying, ‘What shall we eat?’ or ‘What shall we drink?’ or ‘What shall we wear?’ For the pagans run after all these things, and your heavenly Father knows that you need them. But seek first his kingdom and his righteousness, and all these things will be given to you as well. Therefore do not worry about tomorrow, for tomorrow will worry about itself. Each day has enough trouble of its own.”
I’m a worrier. It’s part of my mental illness - catastrophic thinking, but I know the truth is that we are insignificant and this gives me a bit of peace.
Ah, yes, of course. The Lord's Prayer is in this book. One of my fatherites. Thank you, Zac
Ever heard of this?
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Socialist_Patients%27_Collective