if the world should end

The one bright spot in Spider-Man: Turn Off the Dark is a simple and haunting duet called "If the World Should End." In it, Mary Jane tells Peter that if it was the end of the world (it turns out, there is a terrifying rampage going on at the same time), she'd just want to be with him. Not an original thought, but nicely executed as only music and words can be.
I mention it because I've been reading A Short History of Nearly Everything by Bill Bryson, and I've reached the section where disaster movies are made plausible by scientists' findings. For example, the volcano under Yellowstone is overdue to erupt and drown the whole continent in suffocating ash. Also, asteroids with similarly catastrophic potential cross Earth's orbit regularly, and there's no way we could stop them. The one comfort is that we'd most probably never see it coming, and so be obliterated before we knew what was happening.
Then after easily surviving the first tremor and then hurricane of my life, I went to work at the farmers' market. Where the farmer I've worked for for 7 years told us he and everyone around him was flooded. There will be no pumpkins this year, no fall peas or onions or potatoes. He won't have enough to sell this week. And the rain yesterday has me worried.

A lot of doom & gloom, right?

But, actually, it motivated me. When science has verified that you really have excellent reasons to live every day like it's your last, it has a way of focusing your attention. So I had an overdue conversation with the Mr. about our immediate future, about my fears that I will waste my time in one way or another (a job I hate or procrastinating acting-career moves), and disappoint him. A very serious conversation about money and responsibility, and other uncomfortable, isolating topics. You know his culminating thought, after hours of me pouring my doubts and worries at him? "Well, I think you're extremely talented, and smart and capable, and you can manage to do it all."

"You are all I need,
And all I can defend,
All I need to hold on to,
If the world should end."