So what? It’s always the end of the world as we know it. That just means there’s a new one, a new world, one that is of our making. Darn, that song by REM is hard to shake once it enters the brain. “It’s the End of the World (As We Know It),” but remember the ending, “and I feel fine.”
Regardless of the motive behind the musicians’ lyrics, their words bear some truth and advice for everyone. The “old world” ends every moment. Look: It just ended, and look at you, still here, still capable of feeling fine. A new world to construct with no obstacles from the old one: Whenever any “old world” collapses, there is the potential to build a new one. And that’s the potential revealed in some archaeological digs.
Whether or not Heinrich Schliemann discovered Homer’s actual “Troy” is highly debatable. What he did discover seems to be layers of a settlement, succeeding ruins built one after another. So, also, we find such layering of settlements throughout the world, and that practice seems to go so far back that it is evident in the rock shelter Meadowcroft at Avella, PA, one of the oldest inhabited sites in North America. Layering is what we humans do. As one “world” falls into disuse or disrepair or abandonment, another rises in its place.
You might have experienced an “end of the world as you knew it,” but here you are, building a new layer, another world on top of that which you lost. It’s always the “end of the world as we know it.” For you. For me.
I can’t answer for you, of course. I just know that I seem to have little choice other than to rebuild daily. I know that laying a new city over an old one or building a new life over an old one isn’t easy for any of us. Yes, “it’s the end of the world as we know it, and (or but) I feel fine.” You?
Regardless of the motive behind the musicians’ lyrics, their words bear some truth and advice for everyone. The “old world” ends every moment. Look: It just ended, and look at you, still here, still capable of feeling fine. A new world to construct with no obstacles from the old one: Whenever any “old world” collapses, there is the potential to build a new one. And that’s the potential revealed in some archaeological digs.
Whether or not Heinrich Schliemann discovered Homer’s actual “Troy” is highly debatable. What he did discover seems to be layers of a settlement, succeeding ruins built one after another. So, also, we find such layering of settlements throughout the world, and that practice seems to go so far back that it is evident in the rock shelter Meadowcroft at Avella, PA, one of the oldest inhabited sites in North America. Layering is what we humans do. As one “world” falls into disuse or disrepair or abandonment, another rises in its place.
You might have experienced an “end of the world as you knew it,” but here you are, building a new layer, another world on top of that which you lost. It’s always the “end of the world as we know it.” For you. For me.
I can’t answer for you, of course. I just know that I seem to have little choice other than to rebuild daily. I know that laying a new city over an old one or building a new life over an old one isn’t easy for any of us. Yes, “it’s the end of the world as we know it, and (or but) I feel fine.” You?
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