The Haunting

Hello.

What do you do when your dream starts to fade?

I haven’t been here for a while. My last post was in February this year. It occurs like this from time to time. I’m romantically involved with life, not my blog. Though in truth, I’ve just been caught up in keeping my head above water.

But there is also a deeper reason I’ve not tickled the keyboard, though I’ve not wanted to admit it. And it stems from way back to November 2020.

Last November I watched David Attenborough’s documentary, A Life on Our Planet.

It put everything into perspective for me, including how we as humans might receive the news and contribute to the change. I think I was spot on with my predictions.

I asked around at work. Who had seen it? What did they think?

The general consensus was that it is an awesome documentary highlighting the predicament the planet faces and how we as a civilisation have created such problems – and what we can do to begin to make changes for the better.

But no one I spoke to actually held any hope that anything could be done and that we are pretty much doomed. Which I suspect is very much just a resigned attitude that empowers us – in a very strange way – to justify doing nothing.

I kept asking people if they’d seen it. And then I stopped. Because the responses were all the same. Resignation.

I watched the documentary again. It’s a pretty clear message. There is hope, but we need to act. Like decades ago.

But then it all just went quiet and so now it’s just another nicely filmed and presented documentary detailing the decline of our planet and the inevitable collapse of humanity.

My family watched it with me. They still leave the lights on when not in the room. They leave doors open when the heating is on. The Little Fellas grow more and more intrigued by Youtube for Kids and Minecraft than the guinea pigs they need to feed and clean or the fact that our local council is now supplying kitchen scrap caddies for each household to encourage a practice that Daddy’s been doing for decades.

Even Mrs PP’s interest in the garden waned. She started reading more and more ebooks on her cell phone. I’m assuming to escape the mind numbing world of day to day life and caring for Gran which just seems to be spiraling further and further into a sugar-fueled madness. The carer’s take Gran out and, not wanting or perhaps even being allowed to deny Gran her moments of culinary pleasure, return her home with elevated blood sugar. This inevitably means Gran is up all hours of the night. Watching TV with the volume up loud because she won’t use her hearing aids or headphones. Back and forward to the toilet. Sleeping and napping during the day. Repeat. Repeat. Repeat.

I upped camp and have been sleeping in the office for weeks now because I value my sleep, and still don’t appear to be getting quality sleep. Only from time to time.

And so I slipped away.

Everything has become so much more harder and overwhelming. The garden projects have stalled. I’ve pushed myself to keep the progress up. But some days I’m just too tired or there is other stuff to attend to. Or usually, there is other stuff to attend to and when I have time – I’m just too tired.

I moved into survival mode and began to shut down. Still the message of the documentary clung to me. The resignation, indifference and self imbued ignorance I saw in myself and others haunted me.

I became troubled by observing Gran living day in day our for the next jigsaw puzzle piece to fall into place. For the next sugary treat. The next installment of the news. The next television cooking show. Or The Chase. Or Escape to the Country. And all the while there is COVID stuff happening around the world. Icebergs are melting. The Little Fella’s are growing. Bills need paying.

Ignorance is Bliss.

But the reason I’m here today is to report that I’m back. And despite it being the wettest winter for decades and that this year the winter days appear darker for longer. I’m back to claw my way out of this. I’m rebuilding the vision.

What do you do when your dream starts to fade?

Build a bigger dream.