Apocalypse When?

Ever since I was young, I have been somewhat obsessed with the end of the world. Not because I'm looking forward to it, of course, but more because I have found I become obsessed with everything that scares me. Maybe I want to find out as much as possible about it so that I won't be frightened of it anymore; or maybe it's just the natural morbid human fascination with things we can't control. We don't want to look, but we find that we HAVE to.

This week someone at work mentioned an "Oprah Winfrey" show they had seen about the bird flu. Apparently there was a doctor on the show that theorized that the coming pandemic was NOT an "if" situation, but a "when" one. That is, at some point, a bird flu pandemic WILL hit this world and this country. The doctor then launched into a grisly, depressing vision of what life would be like in such a situation; massive deaths, scarcity of food and medical care, etc. At some point, I just told the person I didn't want to hear it. If, as the doctor apparently asserted, there was nothing we could do to prevent this from happening, why did he bother talking about it? And why would I want to listen?

At some point, I am going to die. That's a fact. There is nothing on this planet or any other that I can do to prevent that from happening. And while I have to live every day with that knowledge lurking in the back of my mind like a shadow you can barely glimpse from the corner of your eye, I see no point in moving that knowledge to the forefront. All that would do is ruin whatever time I have left, and all modesty aside, I don't really think I deserve to be that miserable for the remainder of my days.

Likewise, it's highly likely that at some point, humanity as a whole will no longer be here. Every dominant species in the history of the world has had a finite existence and there is no reason to think that we will be any different. But to boldly state that one knows how this will occur (though to be honest, the doctor didn't say he knew when) seems to me to be not only extremely arrogant but downright irresponsible.

My mother was told in February of 2004 that she may only have two years to live. Now, as it turned out, she only lived 13 months after that. But the first thing I did was to tell her that no one really knew for sure how long anyone had to live. If she had wholeheartedly embraced that prediction, the remainder of her days would have been nothing but a slow, awful march into infinity. I didn't want that for her; I told her I didn't think we should talk about timetables. I said that every day when we woke up I would ask her "how are you today", and we would go from there, dealing with each day as it came and not projecting forward any more than necessary. I hope it was the right approach. I just didn't want her hope to die. Later we took her to the Mayo Clinic in Rochester MN, and the doctor she saw there concurred that no one could say for certain how long anyone had to live. Sometimes people beat the odds, and sometimes they don't. But the point is that to dwell in that terrible "countdown" mode is unthinkable. A certain degree of assumed immortality is necessary just to get through your day without losing your mind.

So I will approach this "guaranteed" pandemic with the same philosophy. We may indeed be headed for something catastrophic. God knows there are enough ways to end things floating around right now; disease, environmental chaos on a global scale, nuclear chess in a world full of mad leaders, asteroids hurtling toward the planet from everywhere. But if we concentrate on today, on how we treat each other in the precious seconds, minutes hours and days we have here, maybe that effort will add up to something worthwhile. It may not forestall armageddon, but it will at least make whatever time remains before it enriching and warming.

Maybe that's the whole point?