This is the time of year when all my favorite prognosticators put out their predictions for the year.  Will the markets crash this year, or will they shoot for the moon?  (shrug)  Unless you’re part of the global 5% who are capitalists in the original sense i.e. they own capital, why does it matter to you what the markets do?  Bitcoin will remain volatile.  Capital will flee from here to there.  More fraud will be uncovered, and a flock of black swans can be seen flapping their wings to the horizon.  Nope.  I don’t have a clue what the markets will do.  Other than perhaps on a global scale, housing prices go down.  But my neighborhoods’ housing prices went up again!  (dramatic sigh)  Do I need to explain outliers and regression to the mean again?

My doomer friends have all squinted in thought at their respective government officials, and the brilliant displays of competence, or lack thereof, and have unanimously decided that this year would be a terrific year to put in a bigger garden than usual.  Some of my friends will have to wait on that garden, as their thermometer reads in the two digits below zero.  (clears throat) Celsius, in some cases.  It seems there is some sort of solar minimum of sun spots at work, freezing oceans and rivers which haven’t frozen over in some centuries or decades.  Do I need to explain outliers and regression to the mean again?

You can’t have regression to the mean without variance, and variance loves to arrange itself in gyres and cycles.  Peak oil, Hubbert’s Pimple, these are simple things, following after a long history of peak stuff.  Peak wood, peak water, peak sunlight, peak obsidian, peak jade, peak gold.  It wouldn’t be so interesting if cyclical incidences didn’t co-vary.  We know that influenza and plagues co-vary with sun-spots.  This makes sense because colder people spend more time in close contact with other people and also have reduced vitamin D levels.  The US’s GDP co-varies with the number of automobile miles driven.  Empires rise and fall based upon whether they are willing and able to implement new ideas or become hide-bound sticks in the mud unwilling to see which way the wind is blowing.  If they spend their time brainwashing the youth with propaganda and squashing creativity, insisting on compelled speech, the collapse of empire is close at hand.

What can I predict then?  More police state antics, more disease, more volcanos and earthquakes, more flooding and fires, more homeless children, more Rescue Game fighting which only profits the rich more.  More indictments of those who practiced pedophilia, and those who exquisitely practiced enterprise corruption on a national scale.  More Congresscritters fleeing the country before their control files can be used against them.  What does this have to do with you?  Nothing, possibly.

The stars shine down upon us all.  The darkness falls upon us all, yet our feet remain upon the path in front of us.  No matter how far your path takes you from your home, no matter how alone your path may be, you know what you are.  You know the promise that lives within you.  When you decide to make the world a better place, to help people, to be kind and courageous, when you decide to endure your fear, to let it pass through you and see where it went, when love remains and hope doesn’t, well, the details will sort themselves out.  You can draw the water of peace from the deep well of understanding only if you’ve dug it first.  Therefore, may it be that you meditate more this year than last.  May that be a light for you in dark places, when all other lights go out.