Jon Snow does know something...

“Uhhm… Well that was disappointing…”

“It really was. I expected a lot more twists and violence and ice zombies and you know … well more GoT things …”

We closed the laptop and went on with our day.

The first episode of Game of Thrones season 8 was indeed disappointing and dull in contrast to the other season’s opening episodes.

We had waited too long to immerse into the fantasy world of GoT as an escape from our mundane lives but the first episode was more boring than my last weekend.

But this is not about the first episode. I am not one of the GoT “fanbois” yet (I just got initiated into the brotherhood of GoT only recently). This post isn’t even about GoT for that matter.

So what is it about...? I will come to it in a minute. Don’t rush me. I am having a bad hangover as is.

Jon Snow gave up everything at a young age to join THE WALL. He kept fighting incessantly for that one cause and one cause only. He does not want no throne, no kingdom, and no riches.

He has sacrificed time again, lost the people he loved, lost the love of his life, was even killed once –literally. But even after all this; he did not give up because he understands the important from the apparent. He knows that the only real threat is the white walkers. If they win, there would be no land, no people, no humans and ergo - no kingdoms to rule. The iron throne will be rendered as pointless as a two year old trying to make sense of the movie Interstellar.

And this my friends, Jon had been doing, since season 1.

All the houses and kings and queens now know about the white walkers for sure. Before this they were more of may-be-they-are-real or may-be-they-aren’t. Jon even risked his neck to capture one of the white walkers and show it to them. All he is asking in return is an alliance to face the white walkers – the biggest threat to their existence.

Seven seasons later – the winter is here, people have been murdered, killed, sodomized, traumatized, brought-back-from-the-dead but nothing has changed has it?

We still have people fighting for power and position and money and riches. Polity is used to make alliances and strategies are being made to ensure that the person they like should end up on the iron throne. People are lobbying to capture power pockets and bending knees and hips to stay in the good books of the ones in power. Hell we even have a blood thirsty teenage girl burning for revenge (she carries list of her enemies like a to-do list).

Umm... hello...  excuse me …

White zombies? Night King? A freaking ice breathing dragon? You don’t think that problem is more important? Or is the most important? Really?

So this got me thinking. Don’t we as people and as a society do just that? Think about it for a minute.

We have tectonic plates shifting below us

World hunger

Rain forest depleting

The global-freaking-climate-boggling-change – take your pick.

But as humans and as a society we are more worried about …

Sexual preferences of a celeb

Star kids and how cute they are

The next super hero movie and how it ends

Bumbo-jumbo-crap-doodle – Take your pick

Even as a company and in the corporate life, what are the problems we are really focusing on?

Water cooler gossips

How much did you get in your appraisals?

OMG why is she / he like that

Or are we thinking of the real problems. The ones that matter.

 Don’t peg me as a puritan. I am at least 340 light years away from that. Easily.

It just occurred to me in that point that problems are always going to be there. Always. As long as you are breathing you will be facing a problem – tough nuggets.

But we as humans can work on picking the problems we want to face. Let our problems not be petty and immaterial and superfluous in nature.

Let us pick a problem that will help us grow and become better. As humans and as a society.

Now finding which is the problem that is most important, the biggest and the one which if not solved can make us dinosaurs (No. Not huge and dangerous. But Extinct. Very Extinct)

For me it is and will be - GLOBAL WARMING

Yes. The debate might have already started in the lower left corner of your brain and may be you might have identified another problem that is well – more important to you than global warming.

No arguing that. We as humans are weird that way.

May be we as a society do need more Jon Snows. Someone who is ready to die for a cause (a cause that unanimously is accepted as the most crucial and evident threat)

Winter is coming for us too people. While we are too busy pouting on Facebook and #hastagging on Instagram and reading online articles (Yes. Irony. I get it) the world is melting at rate of one polar bear a minute.

If we do not unite now and fight this, there would not be a lot of tomorrows for us. The climate is changing and probably would have worsened by the time I am done writing this article and you are done reading it.

We all are sitting on a time bomb. Tick tock tick tock tick. Hope the old gods and the new send us a Jon Snow as soon as they can (and maybe a few dragons too).

In closing, maybe I cannot single-handedly change the climate but I am doing my bit. Not asking a receipt at the counter (saves paper), using bio degradable products, planting trees.

I have promised myself to start picking the problems that really matter.

And I hope the same for you as well…