I think January is starting to become my favorite month of the year. For as much as I used to hate the cold, the temperatures aren’t brutally low as they once were and there’s a calm that comes with the chill, especially when you’re not drinking. The past few Sundays I’ve been taking Phil on long walks in Middlesex Fells and yesterday we did a 6.7 mile loop around the Charles River basin as the sun set. We walked onto the MIT campus after dark, passing by the Simons and Maclauren buildings and I was uplifted by the sight of inscrutable math equations and drawings scrawled on the chalkboards of lecture rooms, small study groups of smart kids working to figure stuff out.
A couple of weeks ago on a walk through Franklin Park under grey skies and a light sleet, my attention drifted as always to the Catalog of My Worries. Except this time as I paged through job, finance, family, friends, health. . .. there weren’t any worries to find there. Factors outside my control, sure (see below), and lingering regrets, yes, especially about my fatherhood. But at least as far as projecting forward my personal circumstances, I couldn’t recall ever having felt so unconcerned. It was an astonishing realization and feeling grateful, I practiced walking without a hunch in my back.
There’s every worry still for the planet and all its species, but Ukraine is winning, and the Republican party’s batshit crazy is starting to feel fringy. In fact, three years out from COVID, I think we’re turning on a major transition away from the order of the past 30 years. It’s becoming cheaper to save the planet than destroy it, but the climate-driven migration of millions is already underway. Globalization is becoming increasingly politicized and centers of power are shifting as the west loses influence. Enter the accelerating effects of generative AI and the hope of viable fusion energy.
Thank goodness for smart kids everywhere working to figure stuff out.
Chris Bell's Journalismo 