Why The World Should End on December 21st, 2012.

I must admit I was a tad disappointed when the NASA video on “Why the world didn’t end yesterday” got out. No, I’m not a doomsday planner; I haven’t been waiting for 2012 all my life. Nor have I have checked everything off my bucket list in anticipation of the d-day. But while I’ve laughed at jokes about the end of the world, a small part of me wishes that the world would indeed, end in two days.

Look at how much pain and havoc we’ve caused within the last week alone. Halfway across the world, our brethren (as much as it shames me to call them that), have shot and stabbed children not even old enough to understand their hatred, while here in India, we reel from yet another tragedy with a survivor just a year younger than me. Forget war zones. We are talking about a day at school, and a day at the movies. And I’m talking about all the scumbags we’ve been dealing with in our personal and professional lives. I’m talking about terrible things happening to good souls, because of terrible people. Forget natural disasters. I’m talking about disasters caused very much by people who you and I have exchanged words with, or passed on the road, or made eye contact with on a bus.

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=2wimiRUHMI4]

When I introspected about the Romance of India, I found solace in your thoughts, in words that made complete sense when you said that we can change things if we work together with conviction, or that we need to take baby steps and look away from the bigger picture sometimes, or that if we can reach out to just a handful and change something in their lives, we’ve done our bit… but with so much in the world falling apart, we seem to be fighting illogical and irrational hatred, as though some of our own have entered a zone of hate that might be a point of no return. And that many of us are going to follow suit, what with the number of tragedies around us growing, and with justice next to never being served. It is quite clear that goodness and forgiveness and kindness have no place in a world where hatred could find you in the safest of your havens, or worse still, find someone you love.

I could go on, about how our times and our generation are both a tragedy, but enough people have already said that. Truth is, no amount of Facebook status messages or tweets or blog posts or editorials will change the dirty game of power, or the dirty line of thought that plagues our society the world over. This is not about pointing fingers or passing the blame, just admitting helplessness, and on some days, hopelessness.

I know that December 21st will go by as just another day. And while the end of the world will be both frightening and saddening, and while it will be pretty awesome to have a few more years to tick more things, experiences, adventures off the bucket list, a small part of me wishes that the world would still end on December 21st, 2012, because our lives are too beautiful and too fragile to be spent in pain and fear.

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Shivya Nath

Welcome to my blog, The Shooting Star. I’ve been called a storyteller, writer, photographer, digital nomad, “sustainability influencer,” social entrepreneur, solo traveller, vegan, sustainable tourism consultant and environmentalist. But in my heart, I’m just a girl who believes that travel – if done right – has the power to change us and the world we live in.