whoops apocalypse

As someone who grew up in the eighties I'm used to the idea of nuclear war but I'm not sure it's ever been as acute as it was on Tuesday. Unlike the eighties, when Russia was the bogeyman, this time it was an American president threatening to end civilization as we know it - not in so many words, but muttering about ending a civilization with the possibility that doing so would unleash a chain reaction was a definite possibility. Literally doom-scrolling on Threads (aptly named if you're my age and British) it seemed that every post was mooting the spiral that would occur if He Who Shall Not Be Named went through with his threat and I have to admit I spent the day in a dazed anxiety wondering if this was finally it. I sat in my front room on Tuesday evening and looked around, everything I've worked for and saved up for, all the time spent, everything that makes up a life... Of course he backed down, and since then I resolved (again) to cut down on my social media consumption and I've felt a lot calmer.

Underlying this all is a sense of fatigue, and anger. I've had forty plus years of this shit, this low level (and occasionally high level) anxiety that some decrepit, depraved psychopath will finally push the button, and frankly I'm sick of it. But what can you do? All you can do is live your life and there's nothing you can do as an individual to stop it happening if it does. In the course of my doom scrolling I happened across a quote, which was attributed to Martin Luther King but I've just checked and it appears he never said it...

""Even if I knew that tomorrow the world would go to pieces, I would still plant my apple tree."