The threat of Climate change looms huge. Wildfires have been destroying immense swaths of nature, killing everything and everyone in their path. Use of fossil fuels and pesticides is at an all time high, as are global temperatures. At the same time, a lot of people are at war or getting ready for it. They are armed with chemical, biological and nuclear weapons, some with the potential to kill millions of people in a single strike. Fundamentalists of all kinds spew hatred and intolerance. Countless people are homeless, famined, sick or dying. We each have our individual issues as well : with our mental and physical health or that of our loved ones, with our relationships or lack thereof, our job, our house, our finances…

Doom and gloom, right ? Yet, things are exactly as they should be: the present moment is the nexus of a tremendous chain of causality; Given all that has happened, all the decisions that were previously made, we are living the only present we could live.

To say that things should be otherwise is to say that you don't like that present, that you don't like the only present that could be. What use is that ? The best that can come out of it is internal resistance, negativity and anger. Such thinking accumulates and leads to rage, or to lethargy and depression. It leads to a feeling of powerlessness, as you wonder what difference little you could possibly make in a mess of such proportions.

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