Its effect is very much surface level: food's more expensive, gas is more expensive, the internet is filled with political rambling yada yada yada.

But the mountains are still there to explore as they have been for millennia, there's still a lot of art to be appreciated, music to listen to, books to read, forests to walk through, stars to look at, secrets to learn about the universe, pipes to smoke and coffee to drink, I could go on.

Humanity has been complaining about "the world going to shit" ever since we crawled out of our caves and will continue to do so. But that will never diminish my love of life, adventure, risk, beauty, connections and the world itself. So those are my gauges I use to judge my day / week / year and I stand by that.