the world ends often

I was standing outside my restaurant in the West Village, asking my coworker about a scallop dish, when a woman walked up to me on the street and told me there's been another shooting in San Bernardino. Another senseless act of domestic terrorism. Another 20 lives lost on a seemingly normal day. I'm working a private party and cooking way more food than is reasonable for a group of belligerent overpaid real estate agents. I think about this poem I read in college, the world ends often. This is the world ending, isn't it? Me flipping fish and turning turnips, while "hallelujah" plays hauntingly? While the earth churns and boils from the inside out? While everyone walks around happily in tee shirts and rain jackets in the middle of December? While the food supply slowly weakens? While buildings are bombed? While the parents of the developmentally disabled children shot today in San Bernardino mourn? The world ends everywhere and often. It is the end of the world today for all of those families and that community. It is the end of the world for someone whose mother just passed. It's the end of the world for people every day who are killed in the street from gang violence and drug addictions and poverty and hunger. It is the end of the world all the time. I can't comprehend it. I don't understand it. I'm grateful that the people I'm serving right now are safe and happy and gracious, albeit annoying. And I'm angry that we all can't be. I'm grateful and I'm angry that I've been so lucky. I'm terrified that I won't always be. I'm terrified that the world will fall apart before I can live the dreams I've been building lately. That something will happen to me or to him before I get to hug my nephew next. And isn't that what they want?