These personal thoughts result from a great struggle I've had this week trying to feel my way through the violent deaths at the Paris magazine Charlie Hebdo, the violent deaths--so many more than in Paris--in Nigeria, the killings of black and brown people at the hands of U.S. police, the thousands dead in the Philippines because of climate change's violent typhoons, and what I can only describe as the two-faced behavior of world leaders who publicly decry terrorism and mayhem even as they sign order after order for the release of bombs far more powerful than anything a lone gunman can deliver.
What I thought were nightly fears that I might be dying were not really personal at all. They were the thoughts of one person aware on some level that our world as we know it is dying.
It's also being transformed. What is so violently and painfully unfolding these days, the gentle voice seems to be saying, is our very bloody rebirth on this planet. We need to go through this, because to continue as we have been, with a small group of humans enjoying the present set of circumstances while the vast majority of us flail about trying to make these times tenable, will destroy us and the planet as we know it.
Does what I have written suggest I condone or support those who use violence to derail our current bullet train? No, that is not what I intend with these thoughts.
But I do believe all humans are profoundly alike. On a cellular level perhaps, on a shared psychological level perhaps, we all know this age is on the way out.
Unfortunately, we disagree profoundly about how to respond. And we are, I would gently suggest, wasting the energies needed for this transition whenever we devote breath to blaming a single person or a single group for an evil that has befallen. We waste breath when we attempt to impose our solutions on those who disagree with our point of view. These disagreements escalate to become violent and destructive.
Our world is in the throes of birth, but the new age is coming out feet first, not head first. We're witnessing a breech birth. We're in breach of contract with the planet. And we're all standing around arguing about who's to blame. Meanwhile there's a woman in labor on the table and a child waiting to be born.
As surely as I know we are all dying--and being reborn--just as certain am I that the personal is political, but perhaps not as you might think of that idea. Because the personal is political, the choices I make can and do affect the world around me. I may not have the satisfaction of seeing how these connections manifest, but I feel in my heart that these cross-transferences happen all the time.
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