Leaning Into the Doomsday Clock

On elec­tion night, I jolt­ed awake around 2:30 AM filled with an impend­ing sense of doom. My cir­ca­di­an rhythm was whacked out from day­light sav­ing time a few days pri­or. So, I did a few yoga stretch­es and turned over to go back to sleep.

But sleep elud­ed me. When I have insom­nia, I prac­tice a pranaya­ma (a yog­ic breath­ing tech­nique) where I length­en the space between each breath. In that space, I can often feel my heart beating. 

Inhale … tick, tick … exhale … tick, tick. After a few rounds, my unset­tled mind added a coda: tick, tick, boom! I imme­di­ate­ly thought of the Doomsday Clock.

Created in 1947 by sci­en­tists who worked on the atom­ic bomb, the Doomsday Clock rep­re­sents how close human­i­ty is to destroy­ing the world. Midnight rep­re­sents the moment that Earth becomes unin­hab­it­able. Over the years, the clock has been set clos­er to mid­night accord­ing to an increas­ing­ly diverse range of threats, from nuclear war to cli­mate change. Currently, we are set 90 sec­onds away from midnight. 

Tick, tick, boom.

A sober­ing thought. Now I am, by nature, an opti­mist, one to nat­u­ral­ly assume the march of time brings more good than bad. I’m aware that this is a fair­ly priv­i­leged world view; my life has been one of gen­er­al peace and pros­per­i­ty. But I have also had my share of world-end­ing heart­break and bounced back because I’m resilient and my default set­ting is a sun­ny disposition.

Except late­ly, when I’ve been besieged by thoughts of cat­a­stro­phe. Everything feels real­ly wobbly.

Of course it does. Entropy is writ­ten into the cos­mic bar­gain. The Second Law of Thermodynamics basi­cal­ly guar­an­tees chaos. Things fall apart. That’s the nature of things.

Yet despite it all, Nature has an astound­ing abil­i­ty to per­se­vere, adapt, and thrive when giv­en the time and space to do so. A dan­de­lion push­es up through a crack in the con­crete, and a for­est regrows after a dev­as­tat­ing wild­fire. Trees care­ful­ly grow away from one anoth­er to allow each tree equal access to sun­light and rain­fall. Polar bears thrive in the Arctic due to their thick fur coat, and desert locusts sur­vive in arid regions due to their evolved tol­er­ance to water scarci­ty. Coral reefs rebuild after ris­ing tem­per­a­tures bleach them.

If nature can find a way, so can we. We are, after all, nature too. History has proven humans resilient, with plen­ty of cop­ing strate­gies for dark times, should we choose to lean into them. 

So I lean in, deter­mined not to start this year filled with dread and hope­less­ness. I set my phone down and turn my face to the sun. I cre­ate more than I con­sume. I take deep­er, longer breaths and encour­age those around me to do the same. I ground in the moment and choose care­ful­ly the ener­gy I share with the world. I affect change in what­ev­er small way I can, in what­ev­er small cor­ner of the world I inhab­it. I hope.