I watched the film 2012 yesterday and I sincerely take back my semi-prognostic ranting about the state of California sliding into the Pacific Ocean one day. While this movie is a fictional account of the end of the world and done so with sophisticated and intense special effects; watching the state of California actually come apart due to powerful and concentrated seismic activity and then…slide into the Pacific Ocean. This scene caused me to take a serious moment of pause and reflect on the quality of my thinking.
To many, December 21, 2012 is now believed to be the date the world will end. This date is also the date in which the 5,125-year-long Mayan (Long Count) calendar also comes to an end. The Mayans believed that on the day this calendar ends…the world ends. Another interpretation is that the Earth and/or the people of the Earth will undergo some sort of physical or spiritual transformation. Either way, a great many people believe that this date will be the beginning of a new era.
The concept of the world ending is as heartbreaking as it is frightening and to see the concept played out in your living room in such detail is enough to cause one to pause and reflect upon…take inventory of and process the elements that comprise the sum of one’s life. All of us has heard the statement, “we have so little time” more then we can possible imagine. I remember a statement made in a movie called “Meet Joe Black” that accurately represents the truth of this statement, which is “Multiply it by infinity, and take it to the depth of forever, and you will still have barely a glimpse of what I’m talking about.”
We have so little time
In this film…perhaps just over a million human beings survived the aftermath, which made me I think about this as if it were real life. I thought about many of the confused and conflicted people in the world today. The substance addicted, the violent, the materialistic and superficial celebrities, millionaires, billionaires, the philosophically deficient, the spiritually numb, the morally and ethically depraved and the ignorant and narrow-minded. All living their lives without a care or worry in the world, taking everything and everyone around them for granted as bask in the comfort of knowing that their money, power and influence have secured them comfortable lifestyles for the rest of their days. They have taken steps to see to their wealth, property and standard of living for the professionals they’ve hired to see to these aspects of their lives, have prepared for a great many social, political, economic and financial situations and crises. However, are they prepare to wake one morning and find that the state they live in falling toward the Earth’s core? Science proves that nothing is certain, nothing lasts forever and none of us can ever really prepare for everything.
Tomorrow is not promised to you, me or anyone else and that is why we need to live full and rich lives while we are here. We need to do the best we can everyday to be kind, helpful, consideration, caring, responsible, accountable, loyal, honest, trustworthy, loving, compassionate, honorable, faithful, committed, dedicated, respectful, intelligent, insightful, passionate, cooperative and charitable. We are not perfect; we all have our problems and situations that come up, which can cause us to shift our focus from what truly matters in life. Yet, choosing one thing to anchor all other things to, one thing to help shift our focus and attention back to where our hearts and minds need to be…something like the fact that we have so little time will help keep what really matters in perspective.
I often wonder what it would be like for the world to experience such things as depicted in the film 2012. I ask myself; would it take something on that magnitude to ultimately make the changes the world needs? What is it going to take for people to wake up and see that life is so much more than sex, drugs and money? Will it require a systemic systems failure of all the constructs and paradigms that tenuously hold our society in place before people realize chance is necessary? Will it take an Anti-Christ like figure to rise, seize power and wreak havoc?
What’s it going to take?
I watched this film and applied the concept to real life and I wept for all the billions of people who think they have time. I couldn’t help but imagine that the people in the film were the people in real life as they woke to find that those they love were dead or they themselves were slowly dying. The sudden reality that their fame, fortune, power and influence would not be able to save them. I wept for ignorance of those who live their lives against the grain of goodness for the sheer purpose of accumulating things and experiencing pleasures all the while thinking they have time to reconcile their lives. For a long, long time I have been angry and disgusted with society, but after watching this movie, I felt so sorry for society. As a whole, we are a machine moving onward and upward…using, abusing and consuming everything in our path. If we can’t stop ourselves, I believe that the planet or the universe will.
“Nature will choose for itself…from itself” – Dr. Adrian Helmsley, 2012 Film