What makes you feel good.
It is both a question and a declaration.
Enjoy your love; dig deeper.
Living systems adapt by transforming themselves, responding to the subtle logos.
I am of you, and this knowledge allows me to release my ego baggage. How can we learn to ride that vibration? Rather than escape by throwing ourselves into a moment, accept the moment and allow it to live in you.
Why are people so angry? It is a valid question. Instead of working on a vaccine they should be working on a chill pill. So says Trevor from South Africa, as he makes fun of Americans resisting mask-wearing and all the strange ways this new platform of self-expression reveals itself, or doesn’t. Supposedly God didn’t wear a mask, or doesn’t, or perhaps just wouldn’t, unless of course he wanted to, at which point it would be for non-conformist reasons.
According to studies done by someone, over half of Americans mental health has declined since some unstated time in the past. Which is to say, the lockdown has proved stressful on many levels. Domestic violence continue to increase the longer people are confined at home, as does alcohol abuse. Seems now we are needing to learn humility, as well as resilience. The ability to know when you need to ask for help, and actually do it. To be able to say, you tried your best, even if it didn’t work. We are all a work in progress, and it is humble pie when we accept it.
When life knocks you on your ass… Learn… Grow… Get back up.
That was Governor Cuomo speaking, rising over the social distance, maybe even offering a hand. Spiritual connection, despite whatever else we have or do not have, will never have, will never be. Despite all that and with it here we are as we are, asking for help.
If you have money to give, put it in the Food Bank, for that is literally what it is, we are putting money into the economy of the people, into their bellies first of all, from which comes all else. Tough and Loving are not inconsistent, but they both have an appetite. For someone who is homeless, they are like an animal, really like a stray, ready to bolt. You need to get them to trust you, make eye contact. And no you can’t help everyone, but you help everyone you can.
This is “The Right Thing” quotient. It’s hard to describe, but you know it when you see it. It’s the iron benders of the curve, changing the story into one of just a little less death. There are the people and places and moments embodying the lessons learned of what we’ve been going through. We got to learn the lessons, or else what is all this suffering worth?
We have learned things here, seen the holes in our way of being. A corporate football team flying a private plane around the globe to get masks, a “Public Healthcare System” that is anything but that, even in quotations. These are places to improve, while also celebrating when and where we can. In Berlin the parks are open again, spontaneously and without much ado, but it is good to hear the children again, and I myself look forward to swing again, to see my neighbors, for whom I can go down the street and ask for a cup of sugar, if I need it for my pie, because that is what neighbors do — share things, pool resources, support each other.
It is both beautiful and slightly disconcerting to see New England federate out into its own region of vaguely puritan function, steaming ahead with its own version of reopening while the rest of the country acts with little control or finesse or information. Around the world we are seeing the individual operating systems of each culture come out. With an increasingly divided America who knows what will come?
We are building a Coalition.
The word itself sounds powerful. Every person has a part in this unprecedented work. Government and social and personal responsibility are each in their own all-time high. We must all do what we were already doing, but better, more innovative.
I see your eyes, he said. At least we still have that.
For between Science and Art there lies Gut Instinct, and though the Governor says we should rely on facts, there is also the fact of the gut, the truths we feed it and how we release back into the world what we have taken in from it. Our own little contribution to this whole economy ecology and family to boot.
That’s what happens, when what happens to you is dependent upon what I do.
Floating in the great wide unknown.
How can you say no one knows? Because no one knows! Sometimes the honest answer is I don’t know. See what happens, and then adjust. I cannot promise you anything other than my best, for that is what I am in control of. We must attend to the Risk/Reward analysis. This is not emotion, this is logic.
His continual emphasis and distinction between the two makes me realize that perhaps I have never taken the time to venture much into the realm of logic, for the language itself seems foreign, even though vaguely fascinating and certainly compelling in how it plays out. In learning a bit of his logic I find my emotions become much more precise, so much so that I think I have been mixing logic with emotion for a long time now, perhaps all of my life, and it is strangely refreshing to be confronted with an equation.
Now we must be vigilant, display our expertise, raise our performance.
Wear a mask people, it’s about the social contract. I can give you a ticket, or you could give me respect. No one one is to blame, but this is just what is now. For you know what’s going to keep you safe? You will. By being responsible and reasonable.
Risk and Reward. School is a gathering. The problem is gathering. Six feet away still feels too far for some and yet too close for others, even if there is a fire burning in between them. We are learning to make compromises, but no one says we need to like it, and sooner or later we are going to remember the reasons humans come together, the Rewards we reap despite the Risk.
Perhaps the part that breaks my heart is the number of unhealthy people in the world, the number of people already at risk. And so many of them in America. That is why herd immunity will not work for them — there is not enough continuity or strength in the herd. American is a country of individuals, and individualists. In a herd each one needs to do its best, to keep the others safe. That is what we must learn. We must remember, not our identify as Americans, but our identity as Humans. We need to remember that all humans are great, and we must remember what made us great in the first place, which is of course each other.
We must constantly practicing letting go in order to find the pleasure that comes from within, rather than from external validation. Whatever you desire, let go inside it. Take ownership of yourself, of your humanity, of your human grace. There will always be pressure to respond to our emotions, we must both embrace ourselves, and take control.
What is this American obsession with being the greatest country on the planet, by the way? Hasn’t this pandemic taught America yet that it isn’t the greatest country in the world, and that, in fact, it is the only country (outside of China perhaps) interested in promoting this false and pointless argument. The rest of the world chalks it up to immaturity. Cultural narcissism. American-ism. But lest we get to haughty and European about it, shall we just say it’s not too becoming?
When does change come to a society?
The great ones always told us, a home divided against itself cannot stand. And here we are around the world, gathering our coalitions and factions. Together, and apart, making distinctions, and decisions, answering implicitly the question: How much is a human life worth?
What audacity we can have in some moments! To actually pretend to have an answer to that question. Here we necessarily transcend the logic, and without argument of emotion.
Who gives? Who takes? If this is how we continue to think and speak and act, it will lead to defeat for all of us. Why pursue a path of division when we are all in the same boat?
We the people.
Yes, the people. Not Americans. People.
There is still a “Right Thing” out there and you know it when you see it. 99% know it, 1% don’t perhaps. Funny that we are back with these same number, but it seems even just 1% of something can have a significant effect on the titration, no matter what the demographic.
All of us have an amazing power; would that we choose to embrace it and give ourselves that honor. And just breathe it in, breathe into it. Feed our power. Feed the fire in our belly.
“Sure, I’d like to go to a bar and have a couple drinks with friends. Yes I know. Yes I know,” the Governor says, then adds, parenthetically, “and I do, by the way.”
Still we set the bar a little higher, challenge all the co-morbidities of life, a word we didn’t even ever use before this, before there was an international pandemic, before natural disasters turned biological on us, and here at 51 considered OLD, he says, with a smirk and a smile.
How many New Year’s resolutions did we make that we abandoned by May? But perhaps this tomorrow is different than it was yesterday, and perhaps we really are ready for the fight, or were all along and just didn’t stop and realize it.
By the way, he says, (as if it is news to the rest of the world or the progressive agenda), We didn’t really have a Public Healthcare System.
But change is imminent, and it can also be our friend. Let us be heroes and rise to the occasion. Become a fan of the data and tell a true story, a real story, the one that we are writing as we speak.
Any country on the globe would agree.