Three recent conversations about Putin and 'the end times'

Photo by Steven Weeks on Unsplash

It’s been a few hours since I properly realised just how frightened people are that we might be living in the end times.

On Saturday, a neighbour said she hadn’t slept for a week because of “all that’s happening in Ukraine”.

“Ah yes,” I replied, “the suffering. We too have been very depressed to see those poor, innocent people.”

My neighbour nodded very slightly. “The nuclear war. To think about the nuclear war is enough to keep anyone awake.” I wasn’t sure if she meant she had been kept up by an inchoate, debilitating fear of nuclear annihilation or by a sad cocktail of worry over impending nuclear extinction as well as the horror of Ukraine’s suffering.

A short while later, I ran into an acquaintance and her young son. As we spoke of current events, she made a warning gesture to the boy. “We’re not talking about war because his school says children can get very anxious that it’s the end of the world.”

And then came a third conversation, with a former jour…