The Catskill Chronicle

By Joanne Wasserman and Dan Brinkerhoff

*Joanne Wasserman and Dan Brinkerhoff live in Milanville, PA. They also own commercial property in Honesdale, PA. They are full time residents. Dan is an artist/inventor/craftsman and Joanne is a businessowner (insurance inspections/loss control). They both love this area for its people and its beauty and are concerned about the various environmental issues that affect it.

Global warming, pole shifts, earthquakes, floods, droughts, Y2K, nuclear holocausts, financial meltdowns, terrorism, asteroids, killer viruses, solar flares, the anti-Christ, 2012 prophecies—these all herald in the Apocalypse, Armageddon, Judgment day. Doomsday predictions come in many forms. Why are we so preoccupied with catastrophes, cataclysms, mass destruction and other various religious and secular scare tactics?

End-time movements have been around since the beginning times-http://www.abhota.info/end1.htm provides a chronological list of apocalyptic predictions dating back to 2800 BC. All doomsday dates have come and gone and yet we continue to create new ones. This is fear-based thinking that permeates our lives with a constant low-level anxiety and sense of dread. Why do we buy into this hype and hysteria? Perhaps it is hard-wired in us to anticipate annihilation as punishment for our sins. Or maybe our lives are so boring that we crave the excitement.  Or they are so miserable that we crave oblivion. Or we feel so arrogant in our “specialness” that we assume we’ll be around to witness the greatest drama in human history. In times of extreme violence, turmoil or general discontent it seems that we project our fears and hopes on a global scale. Thoreau asserted that most people lead lives of quiet desperation. And desperate times lead to desperate measures.

Some people see these predictions as a final warning for the unenlightened—repent or face eternal punishment; partake in a global spiritual awakening and consciousness evolution or face the karmic consequences. What does seem apparent is that there’s lots of money to be made from these various scenarios. Hollywood, book authors and the rest of the media have been cashing in on numerous plots of impending doom and New Age gurus are charging seekers top dollar for crash courses in raising their vibrations.

No doubt, there is much uncertainty in our world and there are some very real global threats to our peace and security. And now locally our region is facing change on a massive scale if gas drilling is allowed free reign. Many people are fearful and depressed. It’s easy to imagine the worst and fall into despair or resignation. But what really matters is our actions and the work we do while we are here, for however long or short a time it is, regardless of the outcome.

By being so preoccupied with global and local catastrophic events we discourage ourselves and our children from the joy of living a full life.  We think to ourselves, the world is going to end anyway, everything is going to hell, so why bother? Our fear and depression immobilizes us, makes us ineffective, and robs us of the day to day simple pleasures of living. And we lose our sense of gratitude for all of the beauty that is still in this world if we only take the time to notice it.

The simplest and most effective spiritual exercise we can partake of is to practice true faith and trust that we will be provided for and to claim the right to a day without fear.