Can We Round Third in 2025?

My next essay was to be titled “Permission to Speak,” and I will be writing that one up next. But as life happens, some other inspiration, and life in general, unfolds which then leads to other thoughts and other essays. This one has been inspired by Francis, my youngest son, who plays baseball. On the way to school he said “Mom, I want to show you a picture that makes me happy.” And he showed me this one, it’s of the Chicago Cubs David Bote’s walk off grand slam…that came at the bottom of the 9th, 2 outs, down 3-0…Francis continued, “it must have been amazing to round third, knowing that you would be met by all of your buddies celebrating and that everything was going to be OK because they were behind and then they weren’t and it was all going to be OK.”

And for some reason this hit me, looking at the joy and that guy rounding third, knowing that he saved the day. And everyone cheering and welcoming him and also knowing that disaster was averted. And my thoughts jumped immediately to what is going on today around the world, on the knife’s edge of nuclear war, and with chaotic messages confronting us daily with imminent peril from various and multifactorial threats. And I thought of all the people that I have encountered in my work from around the world who work tirelessly every day to make the world a better place, to innovate, to heal, to imagine a world that is at peace and that is fair and free and sustainable at every level.

And then my thoughts turned to the “agendas” and the “forces” that don’t want these things, or to support the work of good people. I thought of the few, compromised people who work to block messages of peace, to block solutions, to favor their own aggregation of power and wealth at the expense of others. And the extreme mechanisms of control and force that have been put in place for decades to convince us that their violent fever dreams are legitimate. And for these dark dreams to materialize, a massive fear-based mediasphere has been created to carry dark stories through socials and mainstream media. These stories tell us the world is a dangerous place and that whole peoples need to be eliminated. That we need to be shut in our homes for fear of raging diseases, away from each other. That we need to be fearful of each other. That we need to be fearful of the skies.

To make matters more complex, there indeed is, and because of these service-to-self motives, a whole raft of problems that include increasing pollution, toxicity, censorship, fascism, immoral business practices that harm our health and the war machine grinds on and on. The oppression has, given the data on well-being around the world, made millions feel hopeless, ineffective, powerless. And if, we, for a moment, grasp the light and the pathway, “they” double down, come back at us, slinging more hate, sadism and darkness. In my experience, most productive and constructive narratives are met with derision, are laughed off, and are underfunded. “People want to watch serial killers and flawed people,” we creators, are told. I don’t think so. Given the collapsing box-office and the exodus of viewers from mainstream media, no. People want and are seeking authenticity, meaning, knowledge, pathways to a truth that makes sense.

This shift is building and from where I sit, the fever dreams of the psychopaths must end. It is time for the good and for peace to prevail in our storytelling, in agenda setting, in the goals of our country.

And to come back to the image. You know, baseball is a hard sport to play. Everyone knows that a good batting average is mid .300s so a player is failing 70% of the time. It certainly feels like we have, peace has, failed much more than 70% of the time for the past 100 years. Maybe that’s why the revelation of an ultimate grand slam is so emotional, because life seems stacked against what could be, it feels stacked against those who have solutions, who know what to do to make the world a stable place, a peaceful place, a place that can be prosperous for everyone.

As we look into 2025, and with the winds up change upon us, could it be possible that everything will be OK, that the good can connect and send it over the wall, to pull us away from the edge of nuclear war? Could it be that the structures that have been put in place to dominate us all might be finally curtailed? Can we renew our Republic, our storytelling, ourselves? Are we all at bat, swinging our hardest and could it possibly be that we connect and it goes way over center field for that walk off grand slam? Could it be that we ALL are be about to round third for a triumphant return home?

I really hope so. At the very least, I will be working my hardest to make that possible. Expect more to come from Into the Woods.