I recently read The Road by Cormack McCarthy. We love our post-apocalyptic books and movies, don’t we? We somehow have come to believe that regular work, including filing TPS reports all the time is boring and that fighting for our lives is a lot more fun. This is the romanticizing power of pop culture, that we think we’d shed regular meals, electricity and hot water for some adventure.

For many, it is the year of our Lord, two-thousand and twenty. That is, for all of us who live in the context of the Gregorian calendar. Basically, most countries utilize this calendar. It’s based on the Julian Calendar, which is based on the Roman Calendar which, let’s just say it, these are all old. It’s pretty neat that humans have successfully observed the sun and moon and stars really with accuracy for at least a couple thousand years and long ago, we basically knew how long it took to revolve around the sun. This modern human wouldn’t know what the moon should look like without the weather app on my phone.

The French philosopher, Jean-Paul Sartre wrote a play called No Exit. I won’t be able to do it justice here, but three of the four characters in the drama get locked in a room together for eternity. You probably read this play in high school English, but if you didn’t, that plot might sound familiar right now as we reach the 97th day of May in the year of our Lord, two-thousand and twenty.