Long ago, when I was just a wee one, my parents divorced. Overall, I consider their divorce a good thing, but I cannot deny the impact it had on me and my siblings.

In purely typical fashion, we reacted like almost all children of families that fall apart. My sister, the oldest, almost drove herself insane trying to be perfect. My brother, the middle one, was damn lucky to not have killed himself with his reckless and  aggressive adventures. And I laid low, quietly surfing my way through all the drama, trying desperately to not be a burden and take care of myself.

Of course, nothing we did or could do was going to save our parent’s marriage, but that was the core instinct.

I have been thinking of this lately, because it is what I see here in the west. As our country falls apart there is one group of people who believe being perfect will right the ship, another group who is acting out with reckless aggression believing they can simply force everything back into working order, and a third group laying low and trying to surf their way through all the drama without getting touched. As usual, everyone is wrong.

The west is falling apart and nothing will stop it. It is a natural part of evolution. Every rise has a fall. Every feast has a famine. The feast allows us to expand, explore, and express. The famine clears away all the debris that was created in that time.

We live in this environment. We will never be able to understand or control all of its processes.