Identifying details and some nonessential circumstances have been changed to protect the privacy of the people involved.
I have a friend whose life makes my head spin.
She’s a busy professional with the usual endless list of work, extended family, home, kids’ school, sport and social responsibilities.
As a grandmother whose household now consists of one retired husband and a dog, I alternate between admiration, respect, wonder and worry as I watch what she fits into a sixteen-hour day.
There isn’t much space left.
Certainly not enough to keep up with everything happening in the world.
We met for coffee last week.
She looked at me, incredulous.
The first thing she blurted out was:
“WTF is going on?”
Then it all came at me.
Fast.
Political corruption.
Government incompetence.
Political extremism.
Economic instability.
Job insecurity.
AI changing work—or taking people’s jobs.
War.
Nuclear escalation.
Extreme weather.
Another pandemic.
Food and water shortages.
Human trafficking.
Child exploitation.
Cybercrime.
Scams.
Deepfakes.
Who can you trust any more?
Shadow governments.
UFO disclosures.
It was a lot.
My friend looked confused.
Worried.
Shocked.
Overwhelmed.
Disoriented.
Turns out, she had recently caught up with a professional colleague she hadn’t seen for a while.
An intelligent, wise and discerning woman.
During their conversation, her colleague confided that she could no longer sort out fact from fiction.
Until then, she’d been mostly clear about what was real news and what was fake news or conspiracy theories.
Usually a hard no. Or a definite yes.
Then she watched a documentary hosted by an investigative journalist whose work she respected.
The documentary raised many of these subjects.
It presented information offered as evidence.
She came away feeling she had been left to decide for herself what was going on.
Her former certainty disappeared almost overnight.
Not because she now believed everything.
She didn’t.
But she could no longer dismiss everything either.
That conversation had left my friend in much the same place.
And she’s not foolish.
Nor is she gullible.
And she’s certainly not incapable of critical thinking.
She and her colleague were trying to process an enormous amount of disturbing and unfamiliar information.
And both were very aware that their position had shifted.
Not from no to yes.
From:
No.
To:
I don’t know.
That distinction matters.
“I don’t know” is not belief.
It isn’t agreement.
It isn’t proof that what seems like a bizarre claim is true.
Sometimes it’s simply the gap between an old belief and a new thought emerging.
But it can still be profoundly disorienting.
Some of it concerned events already happening in the world.
Some involved allegations.
Some described possibilities.
Some of it was frightening.
Much of it needed checking.
But at that speed, there was no room to tell which was which.
What she knew.
What she’d heard.
What she suspected.
What she feared.
What might happen.
What was already happening.
It had all arrived as one enormous emergency.
That conversation stayed with me.
Because she isn’t the only one asking:
WTF is going on?
Everything’s changing too bloody fast.
A lot of things aren’t recognisable any more.
Things we once counted on don’t feel so certain.
Sometimes it really does feel like we’re living in a parallel universe.
What can we hold on to?
What can we count on?
Where are we going?
Maybe we need to stop and find out where we are.