It was 1998. Driving through the Embarcadero in San Francisco on my way to the Golden Gate Bridge and home in Mill Valley, I saw the lights of a white BMW speeding up perilously close to me in my rear view mirror as I approached the left-turn only lane. The driver was obviously in a hurry. So much so that at her speed I thought she was drunk.
Just before I reached the signal light, she made a quick pass to my right and then cut right in front of me in my lane in order to make it first to the left turn light. She then proceeded onward at a furious 65 mph pace on the city streets, not even acknowledging me, all the while talking furiously on her cell phone.
All that mattered was talking on her cell phone and getting to where she needed to go as fast as possible — everything else existed as mere inconvenience. The skin at the back of my neck, my fingers and legs were tingling so hard with adrenaline that I had to manage my breathing. I could have crunched her directly in a T-wreck, or been driven off the road and into oncoming traffic had I not brought myself to an abrupt stop. I was almost killed while that driver rode on. It was then, out of nowhere, that the strangest sentence came to my head, words that I never forgot, but somehow for a reason unknown to me at the time felt appropos for the moment: This is how the world ends.
Nearing the end of the 20th century and during the beginning of the 21st, one could say that an apocalypse of sorts had already happened. This apocalypse was not a single cataclysmic event like a devastating bomb or a natural disaster. The apocalypse was the slow-motion destruction of our national soul. For decades, we worshiped at the altar of entitlement. Our ethos, built on cheap gasoline and inexpensive goods, centered around the better car, the latest device, the biggest house in the neighborhood, the second, and maybe third, family vacation for the year.