How fitting that Earth began as a gas that condensed and gave rise to such a watery planet. The fluids of our primordial soup led to our destiny of always being in flux. We live within interacting environmental systems and internal systems, which sustain us.

We create artificial systems of government, society, religion, and economy that tend to clash with the flow of the natural systems. Pure human hubris have led our species to believe that we command the natural systems without much regard to the consequences to our actions. As if everything we see and want we should consume, not giving much thought to the biogeochemical systems that brought those resources into existence.

At the same time, when we are exhilarated by an activity we’re doing, we harken back to our fluidity by saying we’re in the flow. Or when we are overwhelmed, someone reminds us to “go with the flow.”

The flow is inescapable. My only wish for humanity is that we increasingly work with the natural systemic flows and stop being destructive obstacles that block the flow. We’re making ourselves sick and destroying our habitat. For all of our collective intelligence, what good will any of our cultures, innovations, wit and almighty currencies be if ultimately we destroy ourselves?

A dead end makes no sound as you approach it. No death rattle, no warning shot, no continuous beeps until you stop. Even as you bump your head against it, walk parallel to it while running your fingers along its impenetrable wall, most of the sounds you hear are inside your own head. That frustrating conversation, trying to figure out how you got there again. Didn’t you take a different path this time? Adopt new habits? Make new friends? Read more books?

But once again, you’re no longer progressing in all the directions you’d like to go. As you blindly walk along, trying to untangle yourself from life’s interconnected web of bullshit that you unwittingly walked into while distracted by pursuing happiness, you inevitably arrived at your least favorite destination.

Do all paths lead to a dead end?

Even when you’re in constant, break-neck motion, pivoting left and right, still not going anywhere. Periodically, you fling your back against the wall to rest and wipe the sweat from your brow and happen to look up into the sky. The beautiful skies are the worst. Such a contrast to your inner turmoil. If the skies were dark and turbulent, you could at least delude yourself into thinking that the weather commiserates with you. In truth, Mother Nature doesn’t care about you.

So you look into the sky and see heaven. Even an atheist sees heaven, but calls it freedom. Blue, beautiful, idyllic. In that moment, your imagination takes flight. Soaring into the heavens, leaving the dead end behind. Weightless. Stressless.

As you fly above it all, and regardless of any sounds you actually hear, it’s all heavenly freedom. Every last drop of it. There are no walls, no boundaries, no binds, no self-doubt, no inner critic, no needy friend, no overbearing parent, no illogical boss, no crazy politicians, no archaic rules, no that-guys (y’know, that guy who emails the entire company about someone who borrowed his stapler without asking and still hasn’t returned it; so now he’s ready to pull a Saturday night special on a Tuesday morning? Yeah, THAT guy.)

At some point in your flight, something terrestrial and pedestrian beckons. You retain your lofty ideas as you return to Earth. Far too energized to place your back or bump your head against the wall. Instead, you throw your head back and laugh. Look at how far away that dead end is now. Way out there on the hazy horizon and here you are back in the land of opportunities. Ready once again, to pursue happiness down whichever paths it takes you.

In the beginning of scientific thought, there were only four elements: air, water, earth and fire. Alongside those elements developed a very precise philosophy, founded in observation and used for prediction and abstract logic, called math.

Air

(Deep inhale and exhale)

did you experience that

not the scent, but the air

breathe in the fresh

breathe out the stale

breathing in

properly called inspiration

that delightful tickling

of lots of oxygen to the brain

answer me this

do we yawn so much when sleepy

to stimulate brain activity

or to wake ourselves up

enough to find a good place to sleep

Water

From our watery birth

Into our watery world

The most important liquid

Reacts unlike others

Expanding when frozen

Becoming less dense

So vital, it’s a part of two

Biogeochemical cycles

Respiration and photosynthesis

One breaks down sugar with oxygen

While creating carbon dioxide and water

The other captures the sun’s energy and uses water and CO₂

To build sugar and release oxygen

Earth

In and around the most complex substrate

Called Earth

Lowercase earth reminds us

It’s nothing exotic

Like being down to earth

Uppercase Earth reminds us

It’s unique

Supporting life like no other

Known planet

To think

We live on a slowly cooling

Dynamic and massive

Ball of gas

Fire

Just like a passionate person

Not only is the fire inside

But can be recreated

By many methods

Springing forth from the earth

Piercing down in lightning bolts

And every heated thing in between

Math

We all know it’s just numbers

There’s no need to rant

There are only three types of people

Those who can count

And those who can’t

One reoccurring thing Mom said when she took us girls out shopping to a new place and made a wrong turn was, “Kids, we’re not lost. We’re just sightseeing.” Now, the first time Mom used that line, I fell for it since I was the youngest while my two older sisters helped her navigate. Back then GPS stood for “girl-perceived sightings” as my sisters looked for familiar landmarks or read the names of streets. Counter to most people’s approach to driving while lost, Mom never slowed down. If anything, she drove a little faster.  After several sightseeing trips, Mom’s conclusion morphed into, “We may be lost, be we’re making great time!”

And that’s pretty much how I’d describe the journey our country is taking: we’re lost, we’re sightseeing, we’re speeding through and we definitely need more girl-perceived sightings to navigate us to a desirable destination.

Hold up, this isn’t Freedom. I believe you just passed Accountability back there. Wait, I think we made a wrong turn on Ethics. Hey, shouldn’t we be on Constitution instead of Constitution Bypass? Ok just make a left onto American Way. No, your other left.

Wait, why are we at the military-industrial complex again? We’ve already spent a tremendous amount of money here. We can’t get everything on our agenda by spending most of our money here. We need infrastructure, education, healthcare, the environment…

What? Why of course I’d love to take a drive by the river. Which one? Really. The Rio Grande. Let me warn you: if you even say the word “wall,” I will beat your ass. Just keep that word outta your mouth. We could spend less money by helping those countries build their economies than by building that useless fucking wall. Increased trade creates more sustainable jobs here. But you know what? Don’t take my word for it. Why don’t you talk to the Chinese president again? He explained the complexity of North Korea to you in ten minutes. I’m sure he can explain how useful a big wall is for preventing unwanted immigration.

I’m not torturing you. It’s called enhanced interrogation. Well what do you expect? You got me back on this military-industrial complex again.

Yeah, I can eat. Oh, but don’t you take me back to Mar-A-Lago! I wanna go somewhere local. What do you mean you don’t know where else to go? You know what. Move over. I’ll drive.

In an effort to reach across the aisle, I’m working on my smugness. But it’s hard. I read a lot and from a wide variety. Not just to be a know-it-all, but because I’m a writer. I like researching to broaden my understanding of things, even to the point of watching The Hannity Show after watching The Rachel Maddow Show. I progress through my ever-growing booklist, especially for materials that concern the third book I’m writing.

I’ve always loved learning, which is why being a teacher was such a logical choice for me. Although I’m no longer in the classroom, I still have a need to educate people and love that I can now do it through narrative and spoken word. Yet, I must work harder at not sounding so preachy or condescending toward those who initially seem allergic to facts or receptive to alternative facts.

The most empathetic way to interpret this phenomenon is, when people are desperate, they are more susceptible to fall for the machinations of con artists. Once they go down that path, they’re committed to the journey because they want the promised result come true. And the more religious the person, the more that person is prone to put their faith in the con artist or toxic leader. That’s what my research has told me so far. For those who’d care to fact check, please read The Allure of Toxic Leaders: Why We Follow Destructive Bosses and Corrupt Politicians–and How We Can Survive Them by Jean Lipman-Blumen and The Confidence Game: Why We Fall for It…Every Time by Maria Konnikova.

I read those two books over two years ago, long before Trump rode the escalator down into the Republican presidential candidacy. (How prophetic it was the DOWN escalator!) I’d taken notes on these books because one of the characters in my upcoming novel is a charismatic, power-hungry con artist or psychopath who uses people by charming them and saying what they want to hear, but only serving himself in the end.

To be clear, I write fiction. However, living through this election cycle and new presidency has given me the best examples of how to write the fictional character I have in mind. I have learned that no dialogue or action is too outrageous for my character to say or do as long as the other characters, who are his followers, believe.

No matter whether you’re a firm believer in real facts or alternative facts, everyone loves a good story. Here’s one I’d like to call my prediction of what will happen in the near future if the One Percenters get their way.

In the near future, the only people who’ll have the freedom to choose their own doctors are the rich since other people who cannot afford insurance, won’t have any. Instead of society paying for poor people to have health, including mental health and chemical dependency coverage, we’ll pay for the penal system to incarcerate them instead. There will be a rise in suicides, including death by police.

The One Percenters will continue to hoard both the wealth and natural resources to purchase politicians who will pass legislation to accelerate the concentration of both wealth and natural resources to the small number of superpredatory rich families who control the planet.

Simultaneously, technology will advance to make the colonization of other planets possible. At the same time, technology will continue replacing unskilled labor with machines, requiring fewer people to run society, especially to serve the needs of the superpredatory families. When those families leave planet Earth, they will only take the educated civil servants necessary to maintain their own status and comfort. Whatever life left on this mostly barren planet will give rise to the hardiest species since the toxicity of the atmosphere, water and soil will have reached levels not seen since the planet’s creation.

Over thousands of years, the Earth recovers. Doomsday religious texts will have been rewritten. Instead of fearing the second coming of a messiah to end the world, they predict the return of the One Percenters. The revelation is: humans never needed god or the devil. We had both inside us the entire time.

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