About five years ago, I read a book called, The 4th Turning. In the book, the authors discuss how the world operates in cycles. Similar to the yearly cycle of the seasons. Each cycle lasts 80-90 years in the book, and each season lasts 20 years approximately. You can either read the book or look up the 4th Turning on youtube. There are some great videos.

We are currently in the winter cycle, which started in 2008 and will last until around 2030, approx.

The winter cycle is all about the destruction of our current systems and beliefs. Our businesses, structures, ideas, politics, and pretty much everything we have known over the last 60 years is collapsing and will need to be rebuilt. And we will have the opportunity to rebuild it better than the previous cycle. The world is going through this together.

We are watching the destruction roll out from one industry to the next. If you think about what has happened since 2008, can you imagine what will happen in the next nine years? Eye-opening, disturbing, and exciting at the same time.

The collapse of many institutions and companies will happen unless we bail them out. But do bailouts fix the issue?

Bailouts add another band-aid to the broken leg.

Our society has a broken leg. We keep adding band-aids to it, thinking we are fixing it. Adding band-aids doesn’t allow the leg to heal and correct itself.

For example, in the United States, the narrative has been we are unable to provide health care for everyone. How are we going to pay for it?

We printed over $6,000,000,000,000 (trillion) in the past year and a half.

Look at that number. It is a giant band-aid, and we have a massive broken leg. With this figure, we could have easily provided healthcare.

Our society is at a turning point we have never seen before in my lifetime. Granted, I am only 38 years old.

It can be overwhelming for me when I look at the global scale, so what can I do?

That has been a question I have been asking myself over the past year, and there has been one consistent answer coming to me.

Get my house in order while I keep moving forward.

My house includes health, finances, family, relationships, mindset, community, emotions, and beliefs.

Before I can reach out and help other communities or support someone else, I have to get my shit in order. If my stuff isn’t in order and I try to help other people. I am the one with the broken leg. Make sense?

Daily, there is little I have control over. But I can control those things listed above.

As this destruction happens around the world, it is hard to watch and witness. It is excruciating to watch people be so cruel to each other.

Insecurity, unhealed trauma, inability to love my neighbors, and desire to be loved are what I am referring to about getting my house in order. These lead to the belief I am better than someone who doesn’t look or act like me.

As a cisgender man in this society, emotions and vulnerability are weaknesses. Remember, we are the ones that are fighting the lions for the food in the woods and bringing it back to the community.

As men, until we come to grips with the damage we have done, this destruction will continue and might even wipe out the planet.

I know that isn’t an uplifting perspective. It isn’t supposed to be.

Destruction is nasty, unkind, and cruel.

There is a different way, a different path, but it won’t begin until we can look ourselves in the mirror and honor where we are at this moment. Once we honor it, we have to start the healing.

Once we begin the healing, the world will start to heal.

Men without our healing, the world will not survive.

The destruction will win.

My desire is we make it through this wintertime and be able to see the spring.

Love ya.

Watts