and in the end…

and in the end…

after three years…

and after 1,673,076 articles…

and 958,004 blog posts…

and 897,066 television segments…

and 788,545 radio commentaries…

all attempting to answer the question of “will Greece default”….

it actually kind of did.

only they didn’t call it a default, they called it a negotiated restructuring.

and the next morning, everyone got up in the morning and packed their kids’ lunches and put them on the school bus.

they went to work and to the gym and to the diner and they dropped off their dry cleaning and picked up Taylor from karate.

the Dow Jones went on Dow Jonesing and the news anchors continued to news anchor.

and the creditors got the haircut they’ve all known very well was coming.

and the only people who were punished and surprised were those who’d wasted so many of their precious seconds and minutes and hours and days obsessing over something that was obvious from the start and essentially inconsequential.

the mail is going to come today, just as it did the day before.

and at lunchtime, Chipotle will be regurgitating processed faux-Mexican food into millions of American mouths like a mama bird freshly returned to her nested hatchlings.

and tonight we’ll vote on amateur singers warbling old songs we already have an affinity for.

we’ll turn off the lights, possibly have sex, or perhaps we’ll simply be too tired from the meetings and the calls and the errands and all the food and fluorescent lighting.

as though all that time spent worrying about and talking about Greek default can ever be given back to us – as though we didn’t allow it to slip away.

we cannot have that time back, but we can promise ourselves not to waste any more time on the next crisis to come, we don’t have to pay attention to it past understanding the basic facts, we don’t have to be consumed by it or let it take over a significant part of our lives.

because there is always a “Greek default” about to happen, always a new crisis on the horizon.

the key is understanding that life will continue much as it had before…quickly.