“Darkest Timeline”: why does it matter?

When people began mentioning about “we’re in the darkest timeline” or “this is the worst timeline”, I was at first thinking if they were quoting the character Abed, played by Danny Pudi, from the show, “Community”. At first, I thought, it was cute, or I would grin at the mention of this show in social media comments and posts.

But then it was not going away. Like a catch phrase from Rob Schneider in the 80’s, it got annoying to hear, or in this case, read. With Climate Change, tyrannical governments, job loss through Language-Learning models, social media disasters, mental (and physical) health crisis’ that are happening all over the world, why are people so insistent to bring this phrase up in serious discussions of said events?

It made me ponder why it affected me so much. What people post online should not bother me so much, even if it is an attempt of rehashed cynical humor. However, it just kept gnawing at me; this response to these dastardly and abysmal circumstances all over the globe struck me as a sigh of giving up. “The Evil that is all around us has won. It is time we all go home and wait for the End times”.

I do not want to give up. I want to hope. I want to do. Even if this was the ‘darkest timeline’, then what are we doing just waiting around, allowing the bad people be bad people? Or the bad things being bad things? Of course, someone would say ‘well, technically, what is good or bad?’ and to that person I say buzz off and try to sound remedial somewhere else. You know what I mean, and you know what you stand for.

The phrases we use day by day affect our very minds and souls. I’m researching more about it (more like reading books that may or may not have been cross-checked), but there is something I remember, and this comes from Mr. Rogers.

“When I was a boy and I would see scary things in the news, my mother would say to me, "Look for the helpers. You will always find people who are helping.” -Fred Rogers

We must find and shine a light on those helpers. We might not know who they are (just like a superhero), but we can see they tried or did good. They risked their lives or just created something great and shared it with the rest of us. We do not even have to see the news. We can look all around us and see it. I mean, I hope we all can see it.

The trees grow, even if the human vibes are disgusting. The rain falls to water the plants. The animals around us do their best to continue the cycle that has enabled them to assist the plant running the way it has for hundreds of thousands of years.

If this is the ‘Darkest timeline’, we would not have been able to see ANYTHING around us because there would be no light. That means we have time. Time to change things around us. It doesn’t have to be as big as Superman or Chadwick Boseman; one just has to be able to make the change.