We’re all so worried.

So worried about AI doing our jobs.

About eating healthy.

About making sure our kids have nutritious meals and stimulating conversations and play-dates and the best teacher ratios.

We’re so worried about social media and we find ourselves scrolling around and around.

We go to dispensaries and buy kale and wash our clothes and find sandwiches and organic soap and pretend that we’re making decisions that work for us.

Meanwhile death lurks around the corner.

Rivers keep flowing.

A cow wanders across a damp field.

Someone breaks up with someone.

Someone is falling in love.

Someone else turned 50.

Someone else quit a job.

A train passes by with a lurch.

Someone cleans up from a rock concert.

A dentist ponders moving to California and starting over.

A baby is born.

Is it as interconnected as we pretend it is?

Are we all just fumbling around in the dark, seeking a light in the storm?

A port to call home?

Someone who will love us exactly as we are?

Someone who will gently touch our bellies and say that they wish they could see us as we really are?

We work too much.

We rush in the morning, leaving behind cereal sitting in warm milk.

We forget things, like birthdays and where we left our phone chargers.

We schedule appointments and plan a trip and maybe see a friend.

We call our parents, those of us who still have them.

We find grey hairs.

We find ourselves groaning when we stand up.

We realize we’re older than we’ve ever been.

We realize college students are 20 years younger than we are.

We feel the passage of time.

We acknowledge past traumas and realize that even beloved children’s books might just be about death.

We put gas in our car.

And we keep wanting more.

We keep worrying about the cost of a new washing machine and why medical bills are insane.

We look for patters in our lives and maybe we find something.

Maybe we are too picky. Too rigid. Too optimistic.

We look at astrology reports.

We sit in our desk chairs.

We wait.

We worry.

It begins again. All the same, yet all slightly different, if we’re willing to see it.