The western world seems like an old man who has lost his balance. The collective nations have “fallen and they can’t get up”.

These countries are being overwhelmed with violence. Their children are dying in mass shootings in schools and colleges, buildings are being blown up, riots in the street are becoming more common and there seems to be a general loss of faith in our “law and order” societies.

Through all of this, our leadership is hiding behind the curtains, frozen in indecision while the Earth keeps spinning.

The Middle East, teeming with oil and homeless emigrants, is such a confused and hopeless place that we now have countless different factions in Syria, Iraq, Iran, Lebanon, and Yemen fighting three and four-sided wars. Further complicating things is that Russia, the western nations and Turkey are sometimes supporting or undercutting two or three of these sides at the same time, which leaves everyone dancing around each other, blowing people up but trying not to blow anyone up among the major nations that have joined the fray. It is total chaos.

We skate along the fringe of some major catastrophe as we wallow in indecision on the thin ice of world confrontation. It’s like watching a bunch of firemen argue about who has jurisdiction over a fire while the city burns. In the meantime, we are running out of cities. The only things we are not running out of are the aforementioned oil and the supply of emigrants who are desperate to get anywhere that isn’t there.

We need to find some leaders somewhere in this world who can put all these quarreling children in a “time out”. So far all we seem to have are incompetent, immature teenagers who want to flex their muscles or science nerds who have decided to hide in the band room.

The world is a frigging mess and our leaders are pretending that everything is wonderful.

Our sub-conscious selves know this isn’t true. If you look at our literature, films, television and video games, you will see that the common subject matter is the “walking dead”, the end of the world, mass murderers, horror stories and superheroes who save us all with special powers within three seconds of a nuclear explosion.

We have become a world of pretenders with neither the will nor the leadership to accomplish more. We have become the stupid people in the ad who hide behind the chain saws to avoid the crazed killer.

The truth is we are standing on the “ocean’s edge, staring out across the sea. Hoping to find a pilot wise, and a ship to carry me”.

I wrote The Journey (In the Cat’s Eye, Snap Screen Press, 2009) a few years ago to talk about the individual journey we each travel through life. But it also applies to the trip we share as our world travels its own “journey”. Unfortunately, “the winds of chance” aren’t blowing too favorably for any of us right now.

Glenn K. Currie

                           The Journey

When first the waves washed over me,

I knew not what they’d bring,

I floated free in quiet rest,

‘Til the world came rushing in.

I awoke to drum beats calling me,

The same that ruled my heart,

And the youthful soul that marched therein,

Followed an unmarked chart.

Each step required another choice,

Offering different ways,

Decision trees flowed endlessly,

A spider’s web of grays.

Soon I came to the ocean’s edge,

Staring out across the sea,

Hoping to find a pilot wise,

And a ship to carry me.

But no one knew what lay across,

There was no where or when,

Even the stars could only say,

Where I had already been.

The truth I found, was I alone

Must bridge the start and end,

Writing my life on grains of sand,

The winds of chance my pen.