I can't breathe. I can't move. I'm a deer caught in the headlights. I spend endless hours thinking about how to tell the people I love the things I know. I know some things. And by some things I mean true, scary, here-it-comes shit.
Remember the owls? Remember the 70s working class decor? One of my semi-useless skills is to recognize something just as it's coming into being. Kind of a bellwether, not creating the change but recognizing it early. And right now the stuff I'm bellwethering, along with an ever-growing number of other people, is that we're facing great and accelerating changes. How do I get people to see it?

It's important to know what exponential growth is in order to understand what the world looks like. We think linearly - it's how we're wired. Understanding exponential change has to be learned. And I mean HAS to be learned, one way or another we're all about to learn it. Here's an excellent explanation of exponential change and what we're looking at from Chris Martenson, who is a leading figure in the 3 Es scene (energy, economy, environment). (A lot of people are introduced to this subject through him & his online course called the Crash Course.)
Speeding up. Things are speeding up. Everyone feels it. Things are changing really quickly. Big things we once counted on now look tenuous. We will be powering down. There will be massive reductions in energy consumption because we will no longer have access to cheap energy. The weather is changing, and the one thing we're certain of is it's going to keep weirding and intensifying. Money, what it is, what it means, how it's shared is being refigured completely. We're reaching peak everything*. Losing our democracy, losing our healthcare, poisoning our water, what little of it we have left, scrubbing the ocean free of life. This shit is on and it's happening right right now. It's coming to a head and we need to be able to plan accordingly.

I've been studying this stuff for years now. And it's not because I'm addicted to pain. For a while that might have been the case and continuing to study this is to continually experience an amount of pain, but it's so much more than that. I haven been trying to see the honest picture, framed with good science and insight - listening to those who saw previous events coming, e.g., the collapse of the housing market. Facing that, really looking at it head-on has all but incapacitated me. I've a lot of confusion going on inside my heart & my head - what to do, what to do? I want to tell the people I love, show them what's up and what we need to start doing to mitigate the impact of the unavoidable changes coming at us at an accelerating rate.
I think about how to tell people. I've already been accused of freaking people out and being a Debbie Downer with what I say, and I barely say anything. Do I start with the scare then move to prepare (a silly phrase that's been knocking around my head for 2 days)? Do I make a presentation with slides? Do I set it up like a seminar and gather a bunch of people at one time or just talk with people individually?
The thought of telling the people I love so much about something so heavy hurts, makes me hesitate. But we're at the point that's not an option. I can't keep holding my breath.

*The link for peak everything is to a 25 minute video interview with Richard Heinberg, one of my heroes. It's from a series of interviews The Nation did regarding key issues of peak oil and climate change with the biggest names in the subject areas. I recommend the entire series.