The World is Still Ending
The World is still ending — I give it a year or two but I’m just in a better mood about it. Sure I could be wrong, it happened the last time only back then the atom bomb was the big threat. This time around there are so many threats it’s hard to know which ones deserve my attention.
Actually, they all do but I have only so much room in my brain, since I’d like to stay sane.
I always need a serious goal to organize my life around otherwise I’d fritter away the time on Worldle and its affiliates. Ballet dancer was my first goal, becoming rich and famous for writing a bestseller that gets rave reviews in the New York Times was the most durable, but I need a more attainable goal, one that doesn’t depend on forces beyond my control.
When asked to identify what she considered her biggest achievement Jackie Kennedy said “Staying sane.”
Get Judith Podell’s stories in your inbox
Join Medium for free to get updates from this writer.
I used to think she set the bar low.
Reading FINDING JACKIE by Oline Eaton made me aware that Jackie Kennedy’s life was difficult and dangerous. Widowed at a young age with two young children, her husband murdered in front of her eyes. Add the inescapable inlaws with whom she was not compatible. And her creepy second husband, a rich old guy who looked like a toad, and cheated on her. So did her first husband.
The flesh recoils at the thought of sharing a bed with Aristotle Onassis. Or Robert Kennedy Jr, for that matter. Marrying for money is a hard way to make a living.
Those 30 years at the IRS were heavy with tedium, but I had financial stability and I worked with congenial people. Okay, one of my former colleagues committed suicide in jail, but I think it was out of a sense of shame. The important thing is that I could pick who I shared a bed with. Now that I think of it, Spike, my first Siamese cat, was a gift from the colleague who slit his throat in jail.
Where was I?
Oh yes, back to sanity in an election year. Loyalty to our shared world, the world that values truth and kindness over lies and malice.
