Have we all become ghosts in a machine beyond our understanding? I’ve lost track of my passwords. What am I without them? Our technologies provide a flicker of shadow on the cave wall, a bit of light to let us know we still exist.

So alienated from nature and addicted to our reflections we have become. We’re lost in the dream, a ghost in the machine. I’ve felt for some time that social media is cheapening every aspect of our lives, dehumanizing us.

Maybe I’ve lost my way down a rabbit hole or the world lost me. I can hardly say what I think anymore or think what I say.

The last two years have been painful. 700,000 American dead. Perhaps 6 million globally. The persistence of humanity amazes me—the Black Death, Christ on a cross, the abomination of slavery, a world war followed by another even worse…. This was nothing comparatively, but how do we go on?

Perhaps we just give ourselves permission to be sad. I can only raise my sons to be men. I am too old for war, but I feel like I am preparing them for something terrible. I work and play as I always have, in the time I’ve been allowed, in a world that was never perfect.

“The eyes are not here

There are no eyes here

In this valley of dying stars

In this hollow valley

This broken jaw of our lost kingdoms.”

From “The Hollow Men” by T.S. Elliot