Every day is another chance. Our stories are being written, until that day we fail to rise, we have a chance to make a difference, to influence things for the better, to learn something new, to make mistakes, to correct our path, to entertain a grand new vision or accept what is laid out before us. Nothing is predetermined. Nothing is written in stone.
In the Gorham Cave in Gibraltar excavations are on going and discoveries are being made. The last dated Neanderthal populations lived and died in these caverns. According to a BBC article much is being discovered about how these resilient peoples fared towards the end of the line. Climate change drove them from their historic hunting grounds and the close combat hunting tactics that served so well in a different environment did not work so well on smaller faster game. A collaborative, close knit, cohesive society struggled under the strain of environmental pressures and falling birth rates.
When life becomes a battle for survival culture and innovation suffer. The world narrows down and everyday becomes another chance to survive. Distinction should be made between a hard, difficult life and a life lived and molded by a harsh difficult environment.
Our physical environment today is not the harsh frozen landscape faced by our close kin Neanderthals. The environment we face is harsh in other ways though. The mental and emotional climate we are confronted with is tyrannical in its constant onslaught of negativity. A palette of different shades of gloom and doom is offered up with hysterical glee. How do we dodge the push towards the edge of of the pit? How do we declaw the predator that would consume our hearts and minds?
There are forces at work in this world that would have you believe that all is lost. The turmoil and chaos ramping up globally can overwhelm a body. They can leave one feeling helpless and hopeless. We live in a world that is increasingly dark and dangerous and we have little to no control over the narrative that we are exposed to by a 24/7 news cycle feeding on clicks and sound bytes. What we do have control over is how much of our limited time and temporal life we give to feeding that increasingly malevolent beast.
Where are you spending your time and energy? What are you filling those hours with?
I have cut down news time of all kinds. I am focusing on spending quality time with my family. We go places, we do things, we work out, we laugh, we cry, we work and we play games. We live our lives based on the things we have direct contact with, not some nebulous disaster that may or may not happen within our sphere of influence. We are not blind to the difficulties, we just try to make sure that we and those around us are OK.
Reach out and touch a life and uplift it in some way. Battle the agents of despair with kindness. Defy the miasma of doom with a smile and genuine encouragement of one another. We are the authors of our tales. Let us be that knight in shining armor!
Theoriginalneanderthal 