The Isolation Journals - Day 52

Today is the last day of the school year.  It's kind of an anti-climax.  That's kind of an understatement.  I'm glad I fleshed out and realized an elaborate Docket of Shit to Do last summer, because this summer is going to be...unprecedented.  Is that another word we can feel free to toss on top of the dumpster fire and never use again?

Today's prompt is from author, memoirist, and podcaster Carvell Wallace.

Backwards Garfield hates Fridays

Prompt:  Imagine you are able to speak to someone in your community, family, or lineage, even after you have passed on from this earthly plane. It is a person who was born after you were gone, so you do not know them personally. But they are able to find the message you have left behind. What would you say to them? What things do you want them to know about you, about this moment we are in, and perhaps about life and time as a whole?

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Hi there!

If you're reading this message in a bottle, congratulations and I'm sorry.  Congratulations are in order to you and your ancestors for surviving whatever calamities I can't foresee, but I just know are coming.  And I'm sorry for the ways I and others of my generation failed to turn the ship around.  

I'm tossing this bottle into the Atlantic Ocean, this bottle that once contained hand sanitizer produced by a local vodka distillery (don't ask).  And I have a feeling this bottle will find you one day on the sunny shores of The Republic of Kansas.  If that's the case, there's a lot you might have missed, but the long and short of it is that much of what used to be the United States is now underwater, and I bear some responsibility for that.

I just want you to know that we tried.  We tried so hard.  We took public transit when it was convenient.  We recycled when we remembered.  We brought our own bags, until they told us to stop, which was confusing.  We composted for a week until it got too stinky.  We forwarded the articles, we shared the memes.  We clung to what felt normal and tried our hardest not to change at all.

But hey, maybe things still worked out for you, and I can stuff my sorries in a sack.  Maybe you're laying on a beach on the East Coast, where it always was, getting just a little sunburned, like we always did.  Or maybe, in the intervening years, we got the hang of automation, really did it right, and everyone, truly every human, is living a life of leisure.  Maybe this bottle drifted up alongside your yacht.  Maybe that's the vibe in the future.  

Look, I don't know your life, but if you studied history (Did you?  Is that still a thing?), I suspect that you know mine.  Not mine, specifically, I'm nobody.  Mine collectively.  Our life.  Our time.  And so you know all the ways we screwed up.  You also know things I can't know.  Ways we've yet to screw up.  Ways we still have a chance to get it right.  

Listen to me.  Learn from our mistakes.  Hug your loved ones, if you can.  Appreciate the little things.  Whether it's the gentle way your robot butler applies SPF 900 sunscreen to your back as you lounge on your yacht, or the joy of finding a non-radioactive jellyfish to roast and share with your apocalypse colony.  Cherish those moments, for you are alive and you are trying, and that's the best any of us can ever do.