this is history
This is history. History in the making. This is the thing I keep chanting to myself. The thing that somehow manages to make me feel a little better in midst of the chaos of the day.
Here’s the truth, here’s a confession: I don’t know. I don’t know if everything is going to be ok. I don’t know what news sources to trust. I don’t know how to have an educated conversation with certain people in my life. In fact, I am down right scared to have conversations with certain people in my life about what’s occurring.
I hate feeling stupid. I hate judging someone else as wrong. I hate it any time things are not all tied up in a neat little bow. It makes me nervous, it makes me scared, it makes me shy. It makes me not want to speak up or share my voice or shine my light at all. So I try to read, I try to read articles to try and educate myself so that I can, at 39 years old, hold a solid opinion about what the fuck is going on around me.
But I just end up feeling stupider. And this is not a fun thing to feel. And my breath gets short and my heart races. My eyes widen and I reach out to people whom I trust to help me dismantle this overwhelming cloud of fear and confusion that has taken up residence in my space ever since my CNN alerts have started peppering my phone. I want to know when big stuff happens but are those alerts really helping me? I try to send light when I read them but is it really light sent if my heart sinks to the center of the earth each time? And does the light really go? Where? Where does it go?
And some people are doing so much more than I am. Should I be doing more? And some people are doing so much less. Should they be doing more? And frankly, if I were to be no holds bar honest with you, this whole thing goes against everything I stand for and know in my heart to be true.
Here is what I know. I know - yes I use the word know instead of believe because I know it, the way some know god, the way some know love, the way some know peace - I know that if we each and every one of us on this planet were to really own, acknowledge and become aware of who we are as inherently worthy loving divine beings using their human experience, we would not be treating each other this way.
I know people who know themselves as the love that they are. people who have moved out of needing anything outside of them to feel whole or secure or worthy or affirmed as a human beings. Those people can not be anything to anyone but kind. I know that deep down each and every human just wants that, to be treated with loving kindness. And when they are not, they feel hurt and scared. And when they feel hurt and scared, they act out.
I think, I have a sense that a lot of these hurt and scared people have their worth associated with external things and when those external things get threatened, they act out. I mean I certainly don’t have it all figured out and as much as I would like to pretend to be mother teresa, I’m not. I am sure, in my life, I act out. But never intentionally, it is never my intention to shun, exclude or be mean to another person.
Perhaps this is why I can not figure out, I can not figure out how and where people can so easily tread all over their human brothers and sisters in the name of money, in the name of popularity, in the name of false security, in the name of perceived fear.
I get it, ISIS is real. It’s no fucking joke. And I don’t know what to do about it. And I don’t know how to fix it or tie it up in a neat little bow, I don’t think that’s even possible. ISIS is real, millions losing health care is real, a commander in chief who is quickly threatening my american democracy as I know it and seemingly spitting on the constitution is real. White privilege is real too yes and so is white supremacy. And I am sorry but with all my spiritual wherewithal, I can NOT get behind people treating each other this way. And I don’t know what to do about it. I don’t know if there is anything I can do about it. It feel like, in all this, I don’t know anything at all.
And I have an opportunity to learn what I believe, what I think and what I know. I have that chance to take actions I find appropriate to what I believe in, like deleting uber or donating to Planned Parenthood, or marching, or not marching… and so do people who don’t agree with me. So do people who somehow somewhere in them feel justified in walking all over their human brothers and sisters in the name of money, of false security, of popularity and perceived fear.
We are, after all, in a very real way, despite the illusions, in this together.
We all bleed. We all shit. We all cry. We all have bones. We all have pain. Feel your cheeks right now, feel that fleshy area underneath them, pinch it, hard. does it hurt? I want to ask people who think it’s ok to be unkind, to be hateful and discriminatory, on whatever side of the discriminatory fence they are on, if they hurt when someone cuts them. I want to ask them, do you bleed? Do you think your blood is more valuable than that of another’s?
When your mother can’t come home because she was born in a different country or your father gets killed in the name of having a different color skin, or a different amount of money in the bank, or a different religious affiliation, when your baby sister dies while trying to flee to a safer more peaceful place, do you hurt? And do you think that people deserve to feel that hurt? Simply because you don’t agree with them?
And I know it’s been worse. And it’s definitely been better. Border’s have been blending and bleeding into each other since the dawn of human existence. Rome burned while Nero fiddled. Empires have fallen over and over again. We are a young country and it would be wise to remember this at times. A very young country in fact. But this doesn’t make it easier, or better, or excusable and it certainly doesn’t make me any less confused.
And I know it’s more complicated than that but sometimes I wish it wasn’t. Often I wish it wasn’t Always I wish it wasn’t. And sometimes I actually don’t think it is. Be kind. It’s not that hard. Be kind to each other at all costs. Take care of yourself, take care of others. Don’t hurt yourself and don’t hurt others. Use it all to grow. Use it all to uplift. Use it ALL to evolve. Use it all to realize who we are. Use it all to wake up to who we are - love.
And it’s important to speak up, to shine, to share, to express, to discuss, to disagree even if it’s uncomfortable. That’s where growth comes from, that’s where art comes from, that’s where life comes from. I know there will be amazing art surfacing now, I know there will be amazing discourses and discoveries, I know it won’t always be like this and I pray to whatever god I believe in and whatever god you believe in that we can as a people, as a worldwide people, find a common ground and build its foundation on kindness. My preference is loving kindness, but if we can’t agree on loving let’s at the very least agree on kind.
And let’s agree on taking some time and taking some care and taking some space and getting some altitude and thinking of one another as we would want to be thought of and working together as we evolve and take each step forward. Let’s do it from love. Let’s love each other so hard, and be so radically kind to each other that the world won’t know what to do with itself but to match us. This is what I want to see and I don’t have a clue how to get there except for starting with myself. So I love. I love me and I love you. And I will trust, I will pray, I will believe, and I hope that someday I will know. Because this is history.
This is history in the making. And the thing is, while we still can, we are the ones who are tasked to make it.