Refelctions on Choices and Worst Case Scenarios

The last week has been rough.  I can barely stand myself half the time and the other half I am sleeping.  I am angry at the poison that I put into my body every day. The good news  is today is the last day for this round and then I get a break.  Seven days of no revlimid or dex.  Just enough time to start feeling sort of normal... for the level of toxins in body to decrease. 
It is a beautiful morning.  Just after the CH left with the kids I went out and cruised around the valley.  There is a haze that settles in on these cold mornings.  A fog that hovers over the river and whisps up into the sky.  Somewhere someone is burning a slash pile and somewhere else the USFS is doing a controlled burn.  The haze is a mixture of the fog and the smoke.  I went down to the river and watched the yellow orange tinted low angle light coming over the ridge reflect so many shades on the riffles at the head of the rapids.  The spot where the pool goes from being glassy to micro standing waves flowing into the turbulence of the rapid.  The cottonwoods reflected yellow and green against the gray glassy water.  I celebrated the ability to get out and enjoy. 
So much sadness.  The fall is always hard for me.  Time to go back to school.  No more surf trunks and flip flops, carefree playing in the refreshing icy cold water.  Throw in friends dying, and chemo poisoning and it is enough to make anyone blue. I need somewhere to focus my anger. 
I saw some friends at the bakery when I stopped by.  They are also out enjoying the morning.  Not enough time to talk about the sadness we all feel.  A look is enough to acknowledge it. 
We talked about choices.  How hard should I work? When should I work?  What is best for my body?  My point of view seems to reflective of the times we are in;  The American Fall. A time when people protesting inequality are being met with resistance from above and state sponsored violence.  In 2003 I was strongly considering joining the masses that I saw accruing wealth through "real estate investment."  I was in a great position to take advantage of the opportunities.  Every time I looked at it I saw a down side that I couldn't quite commit to.  What if the bottom falls out?  It just did in the late 90's and the experts said, "no one could have predicted."  Now it seemed wealth was building up all over again. 
Do I get involved? work harder?  I was really enjoying my young family and very jealous of the time that I spent on my bike working out my legs and soothing my soul.  "I have enough,"  I thought.  A warm home, health insurance and I am starting to save for old age.  Why make choices that will make my life busier, more complex and thereby more stressful?  I would revisit that question many times with myself and my clients over the next five years. 
My bottom line question became, what is the worst case scenario? and if it comes true will I be ready for it? 
As I became sick the air started to leak out of the bubble.  When I lay in my bed in the ICU also during the fall, I watched CNN.  I watched the experts predicting depression beyond the one that my grandparents lived through..  I struggled to recover that winter as our feeble government and the money people that control them  tried to keep from going over the falls.  I listened to the experts say, "no one could have predicted this."

I am done listening to the experts.  Here is my prediction:  Oil is becoming more scarce.  We are in the middle of a financial meltdown that is energy dependant.  Over the next couple of decades our way of life is going to change dramatically.  Every facet of modern life will be different, driven by high cost of energy.  America will experience something beyond a great depression.  Food as we currently consume it will become scarce.  People will starve and obesity will become a thing of the past.  Travel will consist of walking, bike riding, sailing, horseback and river travel.  Small rural communities with access to water, land and soil will struggle, adapt and survive.  Cities and suburbs will become empty monuments to our unwavering tendencies towards easy choices.  Delivering supplies to them will be considered impractical.  Scraps of plastic that we now throw on the ground or recycle will become valuable containers to be reused.  Internal combustion engines will be valuable as labor savers but we will use a different metric when we decide utilize them.  Agricultural, medical and basic engineering skills will be far more valuable than business degrees of those who are currently occupying the ivory towers. 
Why should I not believe this?  We as a culture have been faced with tough choices for as long as I can remember.  As long as I can remember we have taken the easy choices.  Paper or plastic? Long commute for a few bucks more?  Would you like to super size that?  Don't you deserve it?  Apples with blemishes?  My kids wont eat it.  Have today.  Pay tomorrow. 
Half of our political structure is bent on denying anything I am predicting. They are lying and cheating to hide it. The other half is sticking their heads in the sand.
Whatever.  Get mad at me, call me a freak and impune my motives. 
I have a minuscule 1/2 acre somewhere in the foothills.  I go out in the morning and watch the colors on the river.  I spend as much time as I can with my family making memories.  My health is dependent on the system as it is.  I need modern medicine to keep me alive.  When it goes down I will be dead.  The question to me is what will I leave behind for my family and my community? What is the worst case scenario? 
Thanks for reading.