Doomb. Like many of you, I have lived it, breathed it, and even reveled in it, for years. Decades, even.
No longer.
Today I say goodbye to doom. Today I stop huffing the acrid, sweaty tang of my own paranoia, open my window, take a breath of fresh air, and start
facing life on its own terms.
I guess I'm just sick of freaking out about everything, only to have it all be more or less business as usual.
Let's see, where to begin. Maybe back in the 1980s, when I was a wide-eyed suburban boy growing up in the USA with fears that the Russkies were going
to drop a nuke on my head at any minute. Perhaps those early cold-war nightmares (nourished by simultaneously mesmerizing and horrifying fare such as
The Day After and
Red Dawn) are the genesis of my paranoid world view. In any event, none of those fears came to pass.
Then came the end of the cold war, but with very little break for this nascent doomer. We had the first Gulf War, which was going to turn into WWIII
or at the very least destroy America: Never happened. We had the Japanese, who were going to take over the world through their economic might and
superior skillz: Never happened. Global warming would render the world uninhabitable by the year 2000: Never happened. Y2K was going to send us back
to the stone age: Never happened. The dotcom crash was to be the end of capitalism: Never happened. The housing bubble/2008 finance crisis was going
to be the real deal for that: Never happened. Gulf of Mexico oil crisis was going to kill off all life as we know it: Never happened. Fukushima meant
we would enter 2012 with our skin peeling off: Never happened.
See a pattern here, anyone?
This stuff is a mental prison. How much enjoyment of life have I wasted over the last 30 years worrying about all of the above – totally
needlessly? How has this hurt my mind? What kinds of opportunities has my pessimism deprived me of? Pessimism and paranoai can seem like good
defensive attitudes – but if they are not rooted in truth, its just another delusion. A WORSE delusion, even.
Another thing I’ve realized: people use doom as an excuse to retreat from their own failures. “Well, if TSHTF tomorrow and we’re all out
battling in the street for cans of soup, it won’t matter that I never went to college / have a crappy job/ didn’t get that chick I wanted / have a
funny looking face / am about to get foreclosed on.” The great equalizer, and a great fantasy to retreat into in the face of life’s complications.
But this is not a good enough reason to indulge in doom – again, its just another form of delusion and denial.
I still love this board, and I’m still going to be posting here, because there are some VERY smart, VERY interesting people here. But my days as a
doom-o-haulic are officially over.
Does anyone else pick up on what I'm putting down?