Thoughts on the future or “Happy New Year, 2012!”
I’m sitting at the library contemplating my existence in the world and wondering why the internet is so slow. After almost 34 years of existence on this planet, witnessing: violence, desensitization of drugs, abuse, political strife, war (more a distant relative to war), poverty, comfortable wealth, suffering, and, in some ways, the freedom from suffering; I have also come to realize that things are not really that bad. Many people dread this day as a day when we acknowledge our regrets and make promises that we are (in most cases) not likely to complete or even remember after 20 days. I challenge the masses to go against the grain. Though it is sometimes nice to look at what we have accomplished and explore the challenges that prevented our successes, in many ways it is unproductive.
Last year I did my taxes. It was such a relief to have my taxes as complete as I could make them by the time the clock struck 00:00:00. I don’t think I will be that on top of things today, partly because I have worked all week, and honestly, I really don’t care that much about my taxes. I realized last year that even though I had my stuff done, I still couldn’t file for almost a full month and a half due to waiting on paperwork. Some of the paperwork, I didn’t receive until after I filed in the middle of February. Ridiculous. We are a nation who procrastinate until the bitter end. Then we get upset with someone who tells us…it needs to happen, it’s not happening, why isn’t it happening, what needs to change for it to happen.
I’ve dealt with this from my employees. They have been so used to things just getting done on their timeline. Unfortunately, there are a lot of people who need to do their job and in order for that to happen, I need my employees on top of their stuff. It’s difficult to acknowledge that we are not perfect, it’s worse to request help and even more so scary to request help from someone with power over us. This all points to trauma.
I have come to realize that most of our life is trauma based. We function in a state of hyper-vigilance throughout much of our life. We (humans) are a weak race that has eons of fear ingrained in our genes. Many things spent centuries trying to eradicate us from small viruses to large animals. Our genes are out to kill us (or at least weed out the bad genes and create stronger “us’s”); we are in a process of killing ourselves. Invariably, humans respond to fear differently. Some become irrationally hostile, others collapse. There are those who thrive on fear, or at least have become desensitized to the pressure of fear.
My hope in the next year is that we address some of our fears as a community. That is the core strength of humanity. Community and socialism is what has kept this fragile species alive. Over the next year we need to reconnect with our symbiotic nature and realize that we are dependent on each other, the world around us and those creatures that some consider “lesser”. My hope; that I continue to recognize those who are authentically assisting me and those who do not know differently than to cause harm in my life. I wish for those people to recognize their actions and realize that their intentions are not their impact.
I wish the end of suffering for all life, human and non-human. I want to distinguish that we, in our sense of power often see that, Human/non, male/non, white/non, native/non….and non and non. I am that I am because of what I AM NOT. I cannot be any different; I am because of the pain and struggles of what I am not. I am not a woman and thus I do not understand my wife’s suffering through our pregnancy. I can only see that I am suffering and it is painful. I do not experience the pain and suffering of my clients, because I am not them. I can only experience what they tell me about their life and the things they don’t have or wish they had or want to do differently.
I can see what I have and what I want and realize that they are not in alignment. I am on a path, though I cannot yet decide if that path is the right one for my goals and dreams. I know I going in the right direction and see my destiny ahead. I do not yet see the hills and valleys, detours and off-ramps that may lead me astray. If life were as simple as moving forward, we would all be multimillionaires with several patents. The world economy would not be faltering and we would be doing something different.
I close with this: May we all see that suffering has an end and that we will one day find the happiness that will allow us to feel complete, even for one moment, one breath and recognize that this is that moment without grasping or holding on. If this is our last year together, let us enjoy it while we still can, for this may be all we have. One can hope for an afterlife, a redo, a rewind button…nothing. We live and we die and there is suffering in-between. Those are the only guarantees in life.
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