JANUARY 18, 2022 – My path is rocky but overshadowed by the suffering of worthier souls. Suddenly, I’m racing down a superhighway of collective pain, and I wonder . . .What’s the purpose and destination of such an expressway? I grip the wheel so hard it breaks from the steering column. Upon the high-speed obstacle course of human suffering, I fear a spin-out, a rollover; that inescapable collision with my ultimate fate—just as all other drivers on this crazy route must collide with their inevitable destiny.
In desperation, I extract the frightened remote from its hiding spot deep in my chair and turn on . . . the television.
The superhighway of pain yields unexpectedly to an off-ramp of unreality: advertisements hawking cures for whatever ails us (subject to FDA-mandated recitation of potential deadly side effects)—except the ailment that now afflicts me. Where’s the ad that shows me tossing our granddaughter carefree into the air and exhorting me to “ask [my] doctor”? More ads push us to buy this, buy that in happy emulation of actors oblivious to Covid but high on giddy-scripts generated by global marketing firms; yet more ads pitch sunshine on a beach and kids on a waterslide. On what planet? The ads don’t explicitly say.
Whereupon the distinction between science and fiction collapses, leaving science fiction, yet as close to truth as truth itself—but defined by whom? Is truth what human consciousness creates as prerequisite for purpose—an essential ingredient of sanity and thus survival of the species?
Taunted by these thoughts, I enter an unknowable fog—until a dear friend parks out front, marches up the walkway and leaves a bag of delectable nourishment at our door, supplementing what another friend had served the day before. Science fiction? Hardly. Truth and purpose? Whether earth-bound or heaven-sent, whether judged by us or deigned by some higher force, purity of motivation inspires these loving, tangible efforts.
The gratitude my wife and I experience in response matches the purity of the giving motivation. But I also see elevated heights of our evolution—a science fiction bubble surrounding our existence.
The television blows more hot air into the bubble. More advertisements unleash more dopamine inside the mass market of cable news. Next are happy scenes featuring people burdened by awful, chronic disease, yet now with nary a care, thanks to Big Pharma. Ironically, these fabricated scenes sponsor live reports of real human misery—hundreds of thousands of people without power; people whose once comfortable homes have been reduced to ash and rubble by fire and storm; and people of all stripes who suffer mightily from the pandemic.
Just as nature’s tsunami obliterates the outer harbor—another round of advertisements finances my knowledge of adversity. Where else in the reaches of the cosmos does such science fiction reign supreme? But then again, where else in the universe does science fiction need to be?
Only where human pain and suffering venture forth—and so far, that’s not far.
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© 2022 by Eric Nilsson
