Working together.

It was the worst of times. Georgia had forever fought being one of those who viewed the glass half empty, but there was a hole in the bucket.

She had been raised, prepared to witness the apocalyptic end of the present age, where human history and the world as it is known, will cease. Eschatology, the study of the end, was indirectly taught in schools. Rising ocean temperatures, melting glaciers and atmospheric rivers held the prelude to what has been said to signal the end of days. Earthquakes, pests, diseases, famine, drought, floods, signs from the heavens and wars of nations against nations were occurring as all realms of society had predicted.

She vaguely understood the joyful hope of the opportunities of a globalized world that held promise in post WWII. Around the 1960's. the quickly growing baby-boomer generation witnessed man-made wonders. Paper and coin currency was replaced with plastic cards. Newly developed technologies and science produced first calculators, then computers, that were forming the backbone of a newly emerging society. Industrialized farming and surveillance with satellites could evaluate methods and use of fertilizers and pesticides and make barren lands fertile, and actions of people.

Sixty years later, the unknown was emerging. Unexpected weak interactions were causing a domino effects that left the world fragilized. The old world was ending. There was worry that the new world would regress more deeply into a world of exploited poor slaves under the rule of rich masters. Yet, in spite of the literal dark clouds on the horizon, the result of volcanic eruptions and wars, Georgia found herself in the most conflicting situation of her life.

She had not found a partner. She had gone through enough therapy not to blame herself. The pressures of increasing population and decreasing autonomy had resulted in an increasing number of victims of inflicted with Peter Pan syndrome. Regardless of gender, more individuals found it challenging to adopt adult responsibilities and maintain healthy relationships. They were lost in the fond nostalgia for their youth where they had been entitled and were now facing the predominant Spartan response to live for today, in the military society that had been formed to support an economic hierarchy.

Her generation had been raised with computers and often individuals thought they were smarter than ever before, because they could access and manipulate information. She sadly recognized most people believe in artificially generated algorithms, that support the group tendency to follow the pack that believes what they do. Georgia was a millennial. She knew the dangers of modern thought that all too soon become outdated.

Georgia knew from experience that finding the most direct and fastest route using Google maps was not always dependable, and usually resulted in not learning the road. Real learning happens through surviving mistakes and having the resilience to keep going and finding a way to keep things working.

Natures ebbs and flows, plus the actions of mankind in the last 150 years, were imposing a judgement that was affecting the destiny of many. Unfortunately, the overabundance of information available made choices challenging. Climate change, economic uncertainty, and geopolitical conflict had led to a mix of active, proactive, albeit sometimes disengaged coping strategies. The recent loss of affordable energy, because of pressures imposed by the wealthy getting wealthier, made her realize that she was still a victim who needed to follow trends that made sense.

Knowing the end of the current era was near, the masses looked to find new age answers to old problems. I ndividuals wanted to make the best-informed choice, but it was impossible to be on top of the learning curve given the diverse and often false information available on social media. They were searching for the Azoth; a universal remedy or potent solvent sought after in the realm of alchemy. Religion had taken a downturn in popularity, because of lost ideals, yet the masses still looked for the spiritual essence of the meaning of life. Mystics, doomsayers, false prophets, and those with political and economic agendas had formed bipolar groups.

She let her logic battle with the soul of mankind that was carried in her animal instincts. Mental health awareness promoted turning fear into activism. Her idea of activism was to establish emotional and digital boundaries. She had to hold onto individual choice as an essential turning point in shaping the social waves that directed the pull of mankind. If humanity, as a group was to hold on, it would be thanks to the innocence of individual youth believing it would.

The addictive need to have a child was more than what she imagined possible. She was now swollen with a child that she had planned for and worked hard to conceive. She had resolved that this act was not driven by selfishness. Fighting for beliefs that are counter the current trends takes more than courage. Raising a child with love and offering him opportunities of how to survive and change a world where the hubris of mankind had led to unexpected quirks in the machinery of society, would require sacrifice and compromise.

She abandoned dreams of a single dwelling house. This was out of the question. She was thankful that she was not forced to live in an apartment and share a bathroom with three other families. The model of communist affordable housing had become commonplace throughout the world. Her toddler would navigate a cluttered living room in the small apartment she could afford.

She would have a leave from her full-time career schedule. This would give her time to establish a schedule and nurture her friends as if they were precious plants in a garden. She needed to clump her companion plants, so that they could provide for each other and warded off pests.

The alpha and beta generations of the new millennia were shaped by a totally different world than had ever been known. The child would have to use global information and learn to think beyond total immersion into AI and automation. Georgia did not trust the public education could replace a parent’s responsibility to educate their child with a baseline understanding of nature. She was preparing to be a lighthouse parent, ready to follow Nature’s signals.

That night she went for a walk on the eve of the March equinox. She felt the pull of the full moon, that spoke to her baby in the vernacular dialect of a slave born in a master’s house. It was his time to arrive.

Vernon Alder was born, swathed in vernix caseosa, the white, creamy, naturally occurring biofilm on the neonatal skin that facilitates extra-uterine adaptation. He symbolized the warriors born of the lineage of the white wood of the alder family tree, that bleeds orange-red when cut. His birth, at the vernal equinox, marked a moment that in the Northern Hemisphere, brings the hope of springtime renewal and resurrection. Her young one would have a safe environment for taking risks and making mistakes. She would do her best to protect the vestige of hope that might balance between the worlds of opposites, so that fire that flows up and destroys, and water that flows down and carves the world could work together and not cancel each other out.