These are some strange times! I am almost sure
that I have used this sentence more than once throughout 2025. However,
especially now near the end of the year, it looks like everybody's losing their
marbles.
The other day I was at the photocopy machine at
work, and a teacher comes up behind me and says: “Are you scanning? Are you
photocopying? The questions caught me by surprise. In my mind, I was like: OK
what am I supposed to answer? All I just said was yes. As soon as the teacher
left, a person who was sitting at a desk beside me said: “Why didn't you just
answer that you were flirting with the machine since machines are going to be
able to do people's jobs in the future.” Very much something I would have
thought up. I just laughed. What a weird question to ask!
Yesterday I was watching the news on TV and
literally my TV started bleeding so many murders and tragedies. Nonetheless,
one piece of news caught my mind and made me wonder what the future will bring for
the human species. A girl who wanted nothing to do with a young man was run
over by him. Her body got stuck under the car and he just drove off for a
kilometer and 1/2 while people were honking their horns, some were filming and
screaming “there's a person stuck under your car”. Later, the news report
mentioned that he had a passenger in his car who told him the girl was stuck
under the car. This passenger also told him not to run her over and leave her
alone. To no avail. A crime of passion? She is in the hospital, at the time, in
an induced coma and after a long surgery both legs needed to be amputated. That's
all they mentioned, but I figured that the skin from her body must have been
ripped off. Apparently, she is a young mother of two little boys and why
somebody in their right mind would do something like that, beats me? Why didn´t
the passenger in the car just take away the car keys and not let the enraged
killer drive off in the first place? Why would you be a passenger in the car of
friend whose intentions were clear before you got in?
The reason I said my TV bled literally is
because in the brief time that I was watching there was one tragedy after
another. Misogyny kills, but feminism does not. I guess they reporters just
grouped all the tragedies with women in one section of the news edition.
There was another story of a teacher who went
into a school, shot at some people whom he fortunately missed, then shot at the
psychologist and her assistant. After he did this, then took his life. So,
overall, three people died. Once again, I wondered why. Passion? Rejection?
Betrayal? Pride? Revenge? Money? In this case we'll most probably never know
because the criminal took his own life. But there are people who can´t keep
their secrets to themselves. Humans love to boast.
An extremely sad story for me who works with
teens, a nineteen-year-old boy took his life. He climbed a six-meter wall, jumped
on a tree trunk and slowly lowered himself into the lion cage at the zoo. The
lion went crazy. The crowd visiting the zoo at that moment tried to convince
him not to do it. Nonetheless, the lion devoured him. It was known that he had
always wanted to be a lion trainer, also had psychological disorders, and lived
with a foster family. A young person abandoned by the system. He had also been
arrested for minor crimes during his childhood. When asked why he did what he
did during that period, having a place to sleep and food to eat was important
was his repeated answer. Guess he had given up suffering so much before ending
his life.
It’s still exceedingly difficult to discuss the
news we received the week prior to this one: a colleague was murdered over the
extended holiday weekend. Everyone is deeply devasted by the tragedy and the
circumstances surrounding it. I just hope they find out who killed him in such
a cruel manner so that he may rest in peace, and his family and friends may
find solace.
I've seen many people discussing the end of the
world, questioning if this is it. I don't think the world will end, but our
species will fade away. We seem to be caught in a cycle of life, regressing to
primitive times. It's strange how difficult it is to talk to someone to resolve
issues in a civilized manner. Yet, it's similar to fashion; bell-bottom pants
were popular in the 60s and 70s, and now they're making a comeback. Maybe human
behavior is like that too. We evolve, but then we regress, like climbing stairs.
Sometimes we stumble and fall and must crawl all the way back up again. Maybe
the cycle repeats itself until the lessons are learned.
To sum up, I should stop following the news; return
to my science fiction novels and poetry to help the days pass in these chaotic
times.
Written: December 2, 2025
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