A little political, or something

I have to say something about Islamic State, especially in light of the outrageous tragedy that just transpired in Oklahoma where a man who had been trying to convert coworkers to Islam and who had been fired for unstated reasons, left the HR office and attacked two coworkers with a knife, beheading one of them. To be honest, I don't know anything about Islam, but it seems like an ultra conservative religion that does not allow any dissenting ideas, words, or actions. Islamic State scares the hell out of me. I hate the fact that the U.S., no matter what President Obama says, is engaged in another war in the Middle East. I hate the fact that Islamic State (IS) is like a highly alluring and aggressive spider web, attracting people from all countries to come and attach themselves to the violence and superiority espoused by IS. Proponents claim that they are ridding governments (and most likely the world and the universe) of tyrants. What? By being tyrants? 

It seems to me that this world we live in is approaching Armageddon, if we're not already smack dab right in the middle of it. I'm not an it's-the-end-of-the-world kind of person, although I am fascinated by post-apocalyptic stories like those in The Road, World War Z, and The Walking Dead.  I used to wonder in my younger days who I would be in a post-apocalyptic world. Would I perish instantly? If I lived, what kind of survivor would I be? A hunter? A gatherer? A scared woman huddled in a cave? A warrior? A leader of the people who were left? What would it be like if I was the last human being alive on this planet? Would I stay human, or would I become more like a wild animal? I saw a film, The Hunter, starring Willem Dafoe who played a mercenary sent to Tasmania to hunt down and kill the last remaining Tasmanian tiger so a biotech company could possess its DNA for whatever reason. I don't want to tell the entire story, but I'll never forget what it was like to witness the tiger's abject loneliness at being the last of its kind. So, I wonder, would I even want to go on if I was the last human being on Earth?

It's raining like hell right now, like God is trying to cleanse this world of all the ugliness that is crawling all over it. I feel like I'm at a crossroads. This new place I'm living in now is a holding place, a kind of gentle purgatory that will allow me the time and space to decide where I go from here. Do I carry on as usual, stumbling around, searching for meaning to my life, or do I go somewhere different to create a new life that shoves me out of my decades-long comfort zone? I hope I get the chance to find out.