We Don't Have To Fail

I know, the problems of the world seem so vast, so far reaching, never ending and unconquerable that they scare the hell out of you. But we don’t have to fail. Our leaders and our institutions are failing us, and everywhere people are shouting and angry with their fellow man when they are not actively killing one another. But we don’t have to fail.

How, you may ask, can we do other than fail? It seems we know of no approach except to blame others for the way things are. We are incapable of looking inward for the answers, are afraid to believe that inside us lies something of value we can give to the world. Afraid of the awesomeness of the task and the smallness of ourselves, we place our faith in powerful forces, ceding the role we need to play to governments, corporations, and technology. But we need not do so. We need not fail.

Our world can only ever be as free as each one of us is free. So long as we give our hearts, our minds and our labor to institutions that do not respond to our humanity, we contribute to the problem rather than the solution. We must be both servants and rebels, servants to humanity but rebels against demands from anyone who asks us to surrender what is best in us to systems and bureaucracies that are not functioning as they should.

We can only triumph if each and every one of us works towards the goal, each one of us dealing with the piece of the grand puzzle that is placed in front of us, that part of the puzzle only we know how to solve.

We will only succeed if we have faith that others are not so different from us, that each of us, deep down, has the capacity to work towards a better end than the one we are hurtling towards. We will succeed if we stop digging through the wreckage of our current situation for bones of contention and instead seek out what can still be salvaged. We need to let go of what separates us and focus instead on the vastly more important issue of what unites us. For God’s sake, stop pointing the finger of blame.

We succeed one individual at a time. We move towards success with every soul that commits to the betterment of mankind without waiting for a sign from God or proof that their fellow man is doing his part. We cannot wait for the change, we must be the change. It must start with us. Each and every soul that commits to the path is a step in the right direction, is a step away from the abyss that awaits us should we fail. We need not fail.

We succeed when we refuse to see one another as an enemy. We succeed when we refuse to see war as an option. We succeed when we take away the power of another to dictate our actions and take the power in our own hands. No other person can make you work against the common good. No person, even at the barrel of a gun, can make you do injury to your fellow man.

This is power. This is ultimate power, the power not only to define who you are as a person but the power to influence others by your example and thereby change the world. Powerlessness is merely the belief that others control your behavior, that you must do things you’d rather not as a way to respond to their actions.

You have the power. You must believe this. You are not helpless. The feeling of helplessness you feel is the will of others working within you. You cannot and never will gain power through this feeling of helplessness, it will only further ensnare you in the world that others wish for you to inhabit.

You are free. Whatever holds you down and limits you, you have the choice as to which road you travel. Knowledge is power and the truth shall set you free. You must never use the excuse that the institutions won’t let you do what you would like. They cannot rule without your consent. It is time now for you to exert the authority that is invested in you and in all of us.

The roads diverge quite sharply. One leads to division, discord and destruction. If you choose that road you will see every approaching stranger as an enemy. On that road you will find countless excuses for selfish behavior and the use of force. The other road is a commitment to optimism. Not foolish optimism, for you know the way is long and hard. It is a commitment to optimism whatever setbacks you may encounter. It is choosing a path and sticking with it when hard times come, not falling back on your crutches of negativity and conflict whenever you face obstacles.

The world is in danger. Civilization is in danger. It seems foolish to believe there is something you are capable of doing about it. It seems daunting, the sheer audacity of it makes you want to run away and let mommy and daddy or the government or the free market deal with it. But mommy and daddy can’t help you, the market doesn’t care about you, and the government is only what you have made it. If you have distanced yourself from the power structures that rule then they will not work in your best interests. It is you. It is you, believing in the commonality of humanity and our ability to find a way to peacefully coexist and make our way to a better future. Because if you believe in humanity, humanity will respond positively to your belief. You are not the only one working towards that goal. There are others, too many to count, who have shown the way. Their lives have been a testament to the nobility, courage and faith that can be found in human beings. They have made sacrifices far beyond what most of us ever have to worry about, so do not worry about not being up to fulfilling your small part in the play.

But do not make idols of those who came before you. Do not believe that the greatness exhibited by them does not exist in some degree in you as well. It lives in you, or else you would not be able to appreciate it in others.

You need not do great things, you merely need to do what you were born to do, be what you were born to be. You only have to become aware of the nobility and the possibilities that are latent in us all. Appreciate it in your role models, accept it in yourself, encourage it in others. These three things, acting upon one another, will strengthen each, thus making yourself and others stronger, thus raising up all of humanity. It is within you, it is within all of us. This is our future, if we are to have one. It is a choice for us to make. If you have a better option, I’d love to hear about it. We are all in it together.

Stories Shape Worlds

In my third of three interrelated blogs about what shapes the world we live in, I would like to speak to those constructing the reality we perceive, those tellers of tales and builders of paradigms. For some time now you have forgotten the original magic that drew you to words and stories. What so clearly influenced you as a child you set aside somewhere during the growing process in light of the “realities” the adult world sought to convince you of. Somehow you forgot what you knew to be true, became convinced by the stories told by those who had neither conviction nor beauty in their craft. You came to believe in their ugly story, though to be fair to them, it was the best their storytelling ability could weave.

What they lacked in beauty and truth they made up for in insistence and threat. They sold you an ugly story and they did so by telling you the beautiful and true were childish notions. They told you what you believed to be beautiful and true was dangerous, and that the only safe alternative was to reach less far and for something of far less value. And you believed it, because they seemed so damned sure of themselves. You were trusting, because that is what people who embrace the beautiful and the true are. You were willing to believe that others knew more than you because you didn’t want to believe that anybody could really know that much less.

So you began to live the lie, even though you knew it was a lie. You knew a life so mundane and ugly must be a lie, because life must be better than that. You knew their story was not the real one because you had caught a glimpse of something so much more wonderful.

You never really gave up on the vision you had. Instead, you accepted to live within the lie in order that you could fight it from the inside. You would inhabit the lie and while experiencing it you would learn for yourself the flaws in the story. And there were many gross, horrible flaws in the ugly story spun for you by others. Still, you doubted yourself. You told yourself that perhaps you only wanted to disbelieve the story they told you precisely because it was so sordid and base. You doubted yourself because you had such a scrupulous conscience and felt such a need to be certain about your beliefs. More than anything, you wanted to know the truth—even if the truth was not beautiful—because if it was not beautiful, you would find a way to make it so. You would discover the truth and then overcome all odds to insure that beauty as well as truth won the day.

But the game was rigged against you. You fought the fight on their home turf. You let the tellers of the ugly lie decide the rules, and even then you foolishly assumed they would follow the rules they had created. But they were the tellers of the ugly story, and tellers of the ugly story aren’t able to conceive of a world where playing by the rules ever pays off.

It’s not their fault. Like you they were made to believe in the ugly story, but unlike you, they never got to experience the beautiful one. They were taught their lessons when they were young. They were taught ugly lies and in turn they acted upon them.

It’s a funny thing about a story. The story shapes your perceptions about the world around you. If the story says that people are basically bad, you will behave in fear and doubt and your experiences will basically confirm what you believe. But, if you believe in a beautiful story, if you have even once glimpsed a world that is beautiful, where people act according to the most noble of ideas, you will behave towards others in faith and love and that faith and love will transform your interactions with others.

Not always. The people who have been taught the ugly lie have been taught their lessons most cruelly, and they will not easily be swayed from the story that has caused them to be so guarded, so hurt. It takes someone well versed in the beautiful story not to be dismayed by those so deeply suffering from the ugly lie. Both sides, whether they realize it or not, are spreading the story they have been told, hoping to make their version of reality the official one.

The people who tell the ugly lie are hurting, and their hurt is proof to them the world is ugly. They deny the beautiful and the true but each time they do a little part of them dies. They oppose the story that is beautiful and true, but deep within them they are seeking it. They wish to be proven wrong, but have no great faith that it will happen. They do not realize that their behavior is precisely what is keeping them from truly experiencing it.

They are at war, the ugly story and the beautiful story, each seeking to disprove the other, each seeking to dictate the behavior and attitudes of us all. Each of us are soldiers in that battle, whether we see ourselves as conscripts, soldiers of fortune, or defenders of all we hold precious. If you think of yourself as a proponent of the beautiful truth, you must be as certain of your convictions as the other side pretends to be. You must show leadership. The story you tell must show beauty and truth, free as much as it is possible to be from the ugly and the untrue. For those who suffer from ugly lies will be quicker to see your hypocrisy than you ever will. In that way they will make you a better person if you permit them to.

For that reason you can never allow the belief that you are on the right side to permit you to act in ugly ways or to lie. You cannot win the war playing by their rules. You cannot win the game by accepting the ugly lie as a weapon you can use. In fact, you cannot beat them by thinking of them as your enemy. That is not the story you believe in. The story that is both beautiful and true is that all men are your brothers, all women your sisters. The beautiful truth is that we are all one, all of us destined for some future more wonderful than humanity has ever permitted itself to conceive of before. Thus the struggle is not against others but in the struggle to drag all of humanity more towards the beautiful and the true. And the beautiful and true story becomes closer to being the more we are able, not to combat those who believe the ugly lie, but to help them to see a better way. For in the winning of a soul from darkness, the ugly lie becomes less believable. With every fight we avoid and everyone we are able to convert, the beautiful and the true become more so.

We have all written a few lines of both stories, none of us are angels or demons. Some have written in one more than the other but we need worry about judging or comparing ourselves with others. If there are any winners to be named it is the sinner who has repented, the sheep that was lost and has been found.

And there is the battle, there is the struggle, to close the one book and open the other. The book of ugliness and lies has more pages written in it than ever need be read, nothing more need ever be added. The pages are many but the story is one not worth reading. It is time we close the book, recognizing it for what it is. It is filled with ugliness and lies and while we should not seek to deny it, it is foolish to dwell upon it. Let it remain as a reminder of what should never be, something that collects dust as it becomes a relic of a world that was. The book of beauty and truth is waiting to be filled, its pages already bursting with stories of heroism and faith. And yet, for all the pages of testimony to beauty and truth that awaits being read, there is no end to the blank ones waiting to be written.

War Or Peace

You cannot make war on war, you can only make peace on war. You cannot profess to fight for peace, only work for it. War and peace are alternative paths we can take, different kinds of behavior. They are opposite paths. It is a choice we must make, war or peace.

Once you commit to peace you must leave behind the weapons of war, the mindsets that permit you to see the other as the enemy. You must beat the swords into plows and start tilling the earth, plant seeds rather than attempt to burn the crops of your neighbor.

To believe in peace you must help your neighbor rather than withholding your help for fear of him using your vulnerability to harm you.

Make no mistake, when you choose war you have chosen war. You do not choose war in order to achieve peace. When you choose war you have abandoned peace. When you choose war you abandon the very ideas that make peace possible.

When you choose war you choose “me” over “us”. You choose fear over hope.

Even when war leads to victory it plants the seeds of future wars. No vanquished nation or people ever forgets their defeat. The wounds of war never heal. They fester, for years, decades, centuries, until the time for vengeance arrives. And that vengeance is but another justification for their enemy in times to come.

Peace is the planting of seeds for the future, an optimism. War is a succumbing to the immediate fear. A commitment to peace requires faith while war is a surrendering to the fear that is the basest instinct of our animal nature. It is the fallback, the final position when all else has failed, just as an ill-adjusted adult falls back to infantile patterns of behavior when confronted with a situation he cannot control. As one of Isaac Asimov fictional characters was fond of saying, “Violence is the last refuge of the incompetent.”

The thing is, it may work for some…for a while. And from that, others deduce that it is a valuable tool or perhaps a necessary one, an ever-present threat to be held against others in order to entice them to the bargaining table. But show me the nation that has risen by war that has not fallen in the same manner. What works for the individual does not work for a nation. What works for the life-span of a human will devour a country in the span of several human lifetimes. And beyond that, what works for the individual is toxic for the whole. Humanity has endured through war not because it is an inevitability but because its scope has so far been limited. But larger and more destructive tools of mass-destruction have been filtering into more and more hands. With the greater proliferation of such weapons will come the increased desire to use war as a means of protection against such weapons. At some point the desire for individuals and nations to protect themselves will mean the end of us all.

There is no peace that war provides. Even those who believe in war have no ultimate answer as to how we can forever forestall nuclear war. They provide no vision of a nuclear-free future, no security. They offer only immediate actions to stave off whatever the most pressing problems might be. But the road they propose we take has only one endpoint. War leads to war, not peace. Choose now the path you wish to take.

A New Holiday

I came across this today and felt the need to share:

I felt it today, a certain change in the air, like a spiritual spring has finally arrived. Don’t ask me how I know, but I do: I know that as of today the human race has finally found its footing and is ready to move towards accomplishing the destiny it has always been striving toward. Our record so far has been of struggle and misunderstanding, of hopes followed by disillusionment. But we’ve finally realized both the inevitability of the struggle but also the inevitability of the victory. It’s going to be quite a journey, but we now know where we’re going. We know that while we are free to worship God in whichever way we choose, or to not worship at all if that is what we believe, that we need to respect the practices of others who are not harming anyone else. And if we see another of our brothers or sisters in error, it is up to us to show by example and perhaps by gentle persuasion the path of peace, of hope, of love. I feel it, know it to be true, this burning love for life inside of me. It is a love not only for the life I have been given but by extension a love for all the life that is. For life is life no matter what vessel it resides in. We are all rays of the same sun.

And that is why at eight o’clock this evening, March 19, I stood and looked outside from the highest window in my house with a candle in hand. I looked upon all of the houses I could see from this window, and knew them to be filled with people just like me. I knew all of them were capable of love, and that it only needed to be given the proper conditions to flourish. I knew all of them were in need of love, and that I had a vital role to play in giving love. I knew all of them, just like me, were going to err and stray from the path and that we all needed to work together to get to that future that awaits us all.

It’s a simple message. It requires no religion or government or corporate sponsorship. It just requires individuals who realize that they are connected to the rest of the world in a very deep and beautiful way. You just need to know that the light will shine through any darkness.

I looked out tonight, and mine was the only candle lit. But I would be back again next year on March 18, and every year for as long as I lived, and someday I would look out and see every household with a candle, or a flashlight, or whatever kind of light they wanted to shine.

If you feel it too, if you know in your heart that we are all connected by the heart, I invite you to shine your light on March 18. And I invite you to share the words I wrote. Do not share a link, or tell where you found these words, just share the idea. Let the idea stand on its own and do not let any other thought or “ism” attach itself to it. It doesn’t matter where the idea came from, it belongs to everyone.

Why I Write

I spent the better part of my Sunday playing around on the internet, avoiding the attempt of putting words down into a physical form. And then the words seemed to flow and this is part of what I recorded. This is why I write, to discover that such things exist inside of me. Not sure how well it translates to the reader, but perhaps with a little polish...

     Nevertheless, Doug lifted the old metal latch that was the occupants’ only protection from what was outside their sanctuary and slowly opened the door of rotted wood. Its rusty hinges resisted, as did a certain warning in his heart. But as his eyes adjusted to the dark, he saw a small human form lying curled up on an undersized bed in the corner of the almost empty room. Doug was full of the fear that the suffering of another of God’s creatures could bring upon a man. He wanted to look away, to say that there was nothing he could do for him. He wanted just to forget, to flee and save himself. But he had a certain amount of pride, a degree of teaching from his parents that dictated that this is not how he should act. He was a human and he would act like one. He was not an animal, deaf to the suffering of others. And besides, even animals had empathy for others, he had witnessed it himself. Swallowing his own fear, he reached out to connect with another living soul.

     “Are you okay?” Doug asked into the darkness. The uninterrupted whimpering of the child did not in any way show that he had been heard. Not having any idea what to do, Doug approached the bed and knelt down to the figure lying upon it. The smell of sweat and overripe hay hit his nostrils, the shivering of the child palpable from the short distance he maintained. He recognized him now as the child in the field the other evening, the one who had cut his hand on the sharp blade of the sugar cane. His hand was still bandaged with the dirty rag his mother had torn from her dress. Doug was afraid to touch him, both for himself because it might increase his closeness to suffering and because he might frighten him. Instead of touch he used words.

     “Don’t be afraid. I know what he did, know what Delavois did. I won’t let him hurt you,” Doug promised, knowing his promise to be an empty one. He was helpless to stop Delavois from doing anything he wanted, but Doug knew he would have to find a way to stop him, knew that helplessness was not acceptable. This would have to end and he was the one who would have to put a stop to it. He didn’t know how but it somehow felt that his will would open a rift in reality to permit it. Delavois’ power, after all, was a rift in reality, a wrongness crying out to be righted. Suddenly, this purpose placed itself above all others in Doug’s mind, higher than the urge for self-preservation that was the default setting for all living things. Here, in the darkness, amidst the suffering of a child bereft of his mother, Doug discovered something so beautiful he almost wept at the realization of it. It was the opposite of what had Delavois had gripped so tightly, that fear that so much shaped mankind’s reality. It was a truth at least as powerful as all the darkness and corruption that surrounded him.

This Poem Is For YOU

I found this poem amidst the piles of papers I keep stashed about the house. I seem to remember writing an improved version of this but I can't find it. If I do, I'll share it. 

I believe in you

Yes, you.

I know who you are

Because I am you too.

I believe you can be what you desire to be

And that what you most desire is both noble and true.

I know this is real because I believe in me too.

We are all rays of the same sun

Tracing ourselves back to the only One.

Travel how we might, we can’t escape our source

Though shame and shyness and embarrassment

Seek to rob us of our innocence

Innocence cannot die while we yet live.

This is the big yes,

The answer with no reasons

For reasons need reason

And reason can only reflect, not be.

Whoever, wherever, you are

Please believe it’s true

Please believe in me,

That I believe in you.