The Luv Doc: That’s What We Do
Earth has pretty much always been a shitshow
By The Luv Doc, Fri., Jan. 1, 2021
Dear Luv Doc,
2020 was the worst year ever. Can you give your loyal readers a glimmer of hope for 2021? Will love be in the air? Will I find an exciting new romance? I need something to look forward to. Whattaya got?
– Mistress Griselda
Whenever somebody asks me to predict the future I usually look them square in the eye and tell them that they and everyone they've ever known or loved are going to die. Call it a personality flaw, but I hate being wrong – especially about the future. There's too much riding on it – and by "too much" I mean everyone's hopes and dreams. I don't want to be the asshole who gave someone false hope just because I was too scared to plunge them into a deep, dark, existential depression. Enough with the lies. You are not going to make it into the NBA. No, not even Cleveland. If I'm wrong about that, well, hey, as they used to say in the NBA back in the Nineties, my bad.
I am not here to blow sunshine up your ass. If you want that super-positive, kid-glove prognostication, get with Jesus. Word in the New Testament is that if you're meek, you will inherit the earth. Psst ... before you meek out and start spraying Champagne all over everyone remember: There's a hole in the ozone layer, and the ice caps are melting, so you're kinda getting a lemon. And if you want to fix things, you have to convince a bunch of idiots to stop rolling coal and buying bottled water. Scratch that, you are going to have to tell everyone to stop buying everything – especially Matthew 5:5.
I know it sounds hopeless, Gris, but hopelessness is the hand human beings have been dealt since that energy-draining light bulb of sentience popped on in our noggins a couple of hundred thousand years ago. Earth has pretty much always been a shitshow, but somehow humans have managed to cobble together a pretty decent existence, overall. Is there room for improvement? Of course there is. Anyone who has tried to take a left turn onto 51st Street from the northbound I-35 access road can tell you that, but there are plenty of reasons to remain hopeful. The COVID vaccines are coming, Trump's pouting party is most likely going to relocate to a penitentiary somewhere (Who knows? Maybe he can share a cell with Joe Exotic!), and DJ Khaled is definitely going to pop up on someone's fresh single. So there's that.
But is 2021 going to be an orgy of unbridled optimism and unrestrained economic growth? Unlikely. The scruffy grackles of this dormant economy are going to come home to roost. Hard times are ahead, but fortunately, you're part of a really resilient species. The same one that made it through 536, 1349, 1862, 1919, 1942, 1968, and 1991 (the year the Red Hot Chili Peppers released Blood Sugar Sex Magik). Frankly, we're lucky more souls didn't die that year. If that track record doesn't put a spring in your step, I don't know what will.
2021 might look a little bleak, Gris, but, as ever, the ball's in your court. Life is what you make of it – even in a pandemic, even when every fucking convenience store/Sixth Street shots bar/cool dentist's office on the face of the planet seems to be playing "Under the Bridge." You have to wake up, wash your ass, and get out there, and try to make the world a better place. Why? Because to paraphrase President Barack Obama shortly after he sank that sick baseline three, "That's what we do!"
