October…
Man, what a month. We learned that surrounding towns like Pryor and Vinita have
been transformed into ghost towns. We lost Fred (which was a huge hit to me).
Those two factors alone are enough to make you sprinting for a bottle of Xanax.
But there was also some hope for us in the future. We saw military helicopters
flying this month, which leads us to believe that there are still pockets of
civilization out there. And then we met three survivors who were making a
sojourn to Denver because there are rumors that there is a legitimate
stronghold there. However, we are not going to try to pack up and go mobile on
a rumor. We might if we were in dire straits but we are still pretty
comfortable.
As I mentioned last
week, we reached our half-anniversary if you are considering the Year One Plan.
Looking back, it seems to me like we have crossed some sort of strange
threshold where people are starting to accept the reality of the situation and
yet enough time has passed now that people are starting to look back and long
for the world how it once was.
As
far as apocalyptic scenarios, I feel like we are still eating high on the hog.
We still have electricity. We have air conditioning, heat, hot water, plenty of
food… We are not going without. Now, for this reason, if you decide to pull off
some tunnel vision, it doesn’t tremendously seem like the end of the world.
Obviously, there are still threats out there. Everyone knows that you are one bite away from
turning into a shambling horror. But we seem to be at point where we are all
starting to miss our old lives, even if it is just simple things here and
there.
And
this is not just coming from one or two members of our survivor group. Multiple
conversations have been popping up with the sentence, “You know what I miss?” I
have tried not to engage in these conversations just because you are allowing
that loneliness/missing/longing live rent free in your head.
Look, I wish I could
have seen IRON MAN 3 or the season
finale of COMMUNITY? But the simple fact is… I can’t. And this is
not like a “I want to get more accurate with my rifle shots” or a “I wish I had
someone to share my bed with” complaint. In order to make things like that
happen, I can say that some of those factors are at least somewhat within my
control. Being able to not see IRON MAN 3
is something that is completely out of my control.
I am trying to teach
Alex that in situations like this, you just have to let that stuff go. If you
have zero control over it, then why do let yourself stress over it? It is like
complaining when you don’t win the lottery. The selection of those ping pong
balls in that machine is completely out of your control. So what good does it
do you to stress over it?
I am not trying to be
a jerk but pining for things that are long gone? It does us no good. We have to
find our way to change our focus so these next six months can be good
ones.
