The Future is Ours to Choose

The world is full of wondours and miracles but men takes his little hand and covers his eyes and sees nothing. – I. B. Shem

I’ve been struggling to find some way of seeing the glass 1/2 full instead of mostly empty as I observe the desolation we are inflicting upon each other and the natural world we are part of. I’ve been struggle to laugh and be joyful as I rejoice in the sunrise. Have I found a way to see the glass 1/2 full? Sort of. Right now I feel like we are being broken open – that may not appear a 1/2 full perspective – but perhaps it is. Perhaps our pain for the world is the very thing that can save us from the mess we are in. Perhaps we can learn to we love the flowers that give us the gift of beauty as much as we love ourselves. I see a glimmer of a way forward that can both face the ugliness of what we are doing to the world and allow for another path that affirms life instead of destroying it. Let’s start with the words of Charles Eisenstein who believes global culture is immersed in a destructive “story of separation”: his main goal is to present an alternative “story of interbeing”.

What Does it Mean to Hit Bottom?

Every time that it get uglier

Every time that there’s a new crisis we are offered a choice.

Wereas when things are going along pretty well, when there’s no immediate crisis

theoretically we have a choice to change but the choice is not put in our face.

So we tend to just go along with things as they are

it’s the same thing in the course of an addiction

if your supply of whatever you’re addicted to is uninterrupted

and you’re still holding things together – how many people quite then?

No, it’s only when they hit bottom – which means a crisis.

At that monment there’s no such thing as bottom independent of choice

it only become bottom when you choose to rise out of it.

If you are numb to the pain of world today you are either asleep or in denial. If you are angry or depressed you are a healthy person, because not to respond with some part of you in despair would mean you are not really alive. When our world hurts – you hurt, I hurt, we all hurt. That’s step 1. Step 2 is to find the joy and see the opportunity that this realization provides – so that you can see that what is needed is a new way forward that heals and unites us with creation. Step 2 is seeing that we have a choice. Step 3 is acting upon it by finding your unique way by allowing the spirit of Life, the mystery some call God, to live within you, so to avoid the trap of narcissm. That’s up to each of to find for ourselves: all I can tell you is that it exists, it matters, and whatever you do will make a difference.

For our lives are defined by the choices we make. It is these choices that define our character, our authentic self. So choose wisely. Tell yourself: “I will not be a part of desecration of Life. Instead I will choose to add to the beauty of the world that is creating the possibility of a future that is vibrating with life.

Always say what you mean and mean what you say

because those who mind don’t matter and those who matter – they won’t mind – Dr. Suess

Could it be that we of the present have the greatest gift: to live in this time of crisis? For every crisis is simply an opportunity to fashion a different future. What we do today is shaping tomorrow. What an amazing gift. Todat we live in a potential paradise – are we going to lose it again through foolish choices? Or, instead, will we follow the path of the poet Mary Oliver, who, in her poem ‘Wild Geese’, advises us to live this way:

You do not have to be good.

You only have to let the soft animal of your body love what it loves.

Tell me about despair, yours, and I will tell you mine.

Meanwhile the world goes on.

Meanwhile the sun and the clear pebbles of the rain are moving across the landscapes,

over the prairies and the deep trees, the mountains and the rivers.

Meanwhile the wild geese, high in the clean blue air, are heading home again.

Whoever you are, no matter how lonely,

the world offers itself to your imagination,

calls to you like the wild geese, harsh and exciting –

over and over announcing your place in the family of things.

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