Life After Doom

Having counts for little or nothing, he explained. The rich man can own ten fast new cars, but appreciate none of them the way a poor child appreciates her one hand-me-down bicycle. It is not having that brings deep joy, but appreciating.

It feels so right that Zinn uses the word “defiance,” because that is what I feel: the energy of fierce defiance. All that is bad around us motivates me to resist, to defy, to refuse to comply, and that very defiance feels like a marvelous victory.

I open up the possibility for new patterns of relationship, where survival, belonging, and meaning are all important and all have a voice. And equally important, I step out of argument mode and decision-making mode into awareness mode so I can actually become curious about what reality—external and internal—is trying to tell me.

Doom is a kind of pre-traumatic stress disorder that arises when our old normal is deteriorating and no new normal has come into view. For our purposes, it isn’t a single catastrophic event at some point in the future. Instead, it is the emotional and intellectual experience shared by all who realize the dangerous future into which we are presently

Life After Doom is for everyone who has reached a point where not facing their unpeaceful, uneasy, unwanted feelings about the future has become more draining than facing them. It’s for anyone who understands that we’ve entered a dangerous time and we need to prepare ourselves to face that danger with wisdom, courage, character, and compassion.

Those who do not have power over the story that dominates their lives—the power to retell it, rethink it, deconstruct it, joke about it, and change it as times change—truly are powerless, because they cannot think new thoughts. —Novelist Salman Rushdie

Third is the meaning (or understanding) committee, often associated with the neocortex of the brain. It makes language possible and gives meaning to the word “meaning.” It enables me to talk to myself and observe myself. It integrates current awareness with memory of past experiences and with the ability to imagine future scenarios (as we did in th

My current working metaphor for my nervous system is “the board of directors of Me, Incorporated.”

What is a poet? An unhappy person who conceals profound anguish in his heart but whose lips are so formed that as sighs and cries pass over them they sound like beautiful music. —Danish philosopher Søren Kierkegaard