Really? I'm supposed to save the world.
I guess I am.
In 2021 I wrote a blog post about saving the world.
“How’s that been going for you?” Asks an imaginary reader.
I smile. The imaginary reader is being snarky. That’s how you know it’s not you. You wouldn’t be snarky.
“It’s going great,” I say. “The world is here,” I say. The sun comes out from behind a cloud to affirm that I’m speaking truth.
My job is saving the world. That’s a direct assignment from God. Even assholes get assignments from God, so it shouldn’t surprise you that I’ve got that assignment.
Also, I don’t believe in God. But that doesn’t keep “The God I don’t believe in” from giving me assignments.
Bobbi completed this life and left her body on January 27, 2024. Tomorrow it will be nine months since that happened.
“Time to get back to work,” God says. “You’ve had a good vacation. You deserved it. You were steadfast and honorable and loving. You learned everything that she could teach you in while in an embodied form. She’s not done teaching you, nor are your daughters. Nor am I.”
“Thank you,” I say.
“So do your job,” God says.
“I’d like to,” I say, “but…”
“Do your job,” God repeats. “The vacation is over. Start tomorrow. Do your job.”
“But…” I stammer.
“You can ignore me, of course” God continues. “Again,” she adds pointedly, “No matter. I’ll love you the same. You know that.”
“I do,” I say.
“What’s your problem?” A reader asks me. “I like what you write.”
“Yeah,” says another. “I do, too”
“He’s been writing a lot,” says another reader. “He just hasn’t been posting.”
“I know,” said another imaginary reader. “We’re fine, it’s the real readers who are losing out. We imaginary readers not only get to read the things that he writes and doesn’t post, we get to read the things that he imagines writing.”
It was all true. And today I realized (yet, again) part of the reason I haven’t been posting was fear.
“Fear of what?” asks a real reader who hadn’t even read the posts I had written and published, much less the posts I had not written. “Failure? Embarrassment?”
“No,” I say. “I’m ok with failure. I know how to fail. I can hardly count the number of times I've failed. And I’ve had successes. But not big ones. Big success is frightening.”
“How so,” a hypothetical reader asks hypothetically.
“I wrote about this before,” I say. This is from 2019.
Running away
…
When I have small successes that betoken much greater success, I get anxious.
I start to run away.
I break the pattern and exchange the dangerous unknown for the comfortable—if annoying—known.
“You knew that in 2019?” Asks a reader. And you’re still letting that fuck you up?
“I guess so,” I said sheepishly.
“Baaaahh,” bleated a sheep, even more sheepishly.
“Alright,” I said. “I’m posting this. And I’m going to work on something for tomorrow.”
”I'm afraid of being afraid, and I'm afraid that I'm afraid to admit it.”
I'm a real reader, and I'll definitely read what you write tomorrow. As for saving the world, I suspect everything we do contributes to the task, even getting out of bed and posting or brushing one's teeth. Anything that's the opposite of entropy. I can't prove it, of course, but it's my working theory.
“My job is saving the world” sounds arrogant. When I write it, even to me, it sounds that way. But that’s just the sound of it, not the truth of it.
It would be more arrogant to say: “Saving the world? Not my job, man.”
I’m not special for deciding to take on the job. It’s a job anyone can take on. There’s nothing special in doing what anyone can do.
I'd be interested in knowing what "save the world" means.