Sometimes I can’t help feeling we have gone incredibly off kilter. Far too many are sinking in modern day madness. While scores of statistics remind us of our fragility as human beings and as a culture, we seem incapable of pausing long enough to right the ship. We have not yet learned the truth: What happens to one happens to all.
Discussions on mental health and mental illness are on the rise, yet the inadequacies of our systems are glaringly obvious. Money for the war machine is boundless, yet too many veterans are homeless. Good clean food is important to healthy bodies and healthy minds, but we reward our small farmers by allowing them to fail. “In God We Trust”, or so we have been led to believe, yet we tighten our borders and condemn the needy.
The inconsistencies of our society could drive anyone mad. And it is. But I do not think it is an umbrella of thought that will unite us or drive the demons away. It must come back to this: We are tied together in one thread of consciousness.
What happens to one happens to all. Our fear of “other” is a symptom of sickness, not a course of action we are meant to follow. We are not meant to follow.
As I take time to ponder our willingness to be led by politics, religion and the economic grind, I am heartened by the courage and vision of the many refusing to succumb.
This is the thread of humanity that has held the world together through reigns of tremendous ignorance. It is found in tree sitters halting the pipelines, in police refusing to serve at borders, and in backyards and acres of those growing food for themselves and others. There is a pulse, a thread of consciousness that unites us. And it is on the rise.
This aired on WDRT’s Consider This, August 16, 2018.
let kindness win 