Okay people. Here ye, here ye, gather round!
We’ve got problems on our hands.
We’ve got societal problems, environmental problems, terrorist threats at home and abroad problems, substance abuse problems, boyfriend problems, girlfriend problems, baby-mama drama problems…we’re up to our necks!
We grind through our daily lives in the center of our own orbits. Revisiting our familiar thought patterns like our own complicated galaxies. Our lives are marked by a series of important and vital events. We’ve gone through so much to get here. We hold tight to our childhoods. We explain who we are to people. Or we try to. We are…so important to ourselves. Because we live inside our skin and can only see the world through the eyes we were born with. We read books. We feel love. We grow. We stretch. We yawn. We wake up and get ready and go to work or to school or hit snooze and go back to bed. We are so…so engrained in us-ness. In self-ness. In me-ness, my-ness.
Your life is so vital. But your life is part of a much larger system. Your life is part of the life of “us.” You, we, we are here. And we are not here fifty years ago, we are here now. We cannot “here” back then and we can not “here” into the future. We must live our us-ness here and now.
Please do not try to run and hide. This is your world. It was given to you. You were given to it. The skin, the many millions of molecules that grow, and squirm, and crawl around your body making you so very you, that skin, it’s yours. Own it. Feel it. Feel your you. Feel what makes your skin breathe, what makes your heart beat, what makes your otherwise carcass of flesh and bone sing, feel you pushing against the inside of your skin bringing you to life!
There is something in there.
We cannot check out. We cannot vanish. We cannot fake our own realities because we do not favor the one in front of us.
Dive in. Dig in. Get fucking dirty. Tear into your you-ness, this us-ness, our we-ness. We are here together.
George Bernard Shaw: Life isn’t about finding yourself, it’s about creating yourself. I say the same goes for the world around us. We must create the world we want to live in. We must demand our dreams. We must engage, we must participate, we must plug in.
You think you are here to be happy? You think life is about finding what it is that truly makes you happy? Pa-shaw, to your happiness! How sad, how boring life would be if it were just the pursuit of happiness. How hollow. We are not here to be happy. We are here to heal. We are here to join in we-ness. We are here to dive into me-ness, us-ness, to fix, to build, to forge, to fight! Your quest for happiness bores me. Your seasonal depression BORES me. Feel your hurt-ness, your sadness, your lost-ness. Love your hurt-ness, your sadness, your nothingness. And use it. Come and prop it up against my pain and let’s make the world a stronger place.
You cannot disengage, you hear me? You cannot unplug. You do not get to choose. We are all here participating in the evolution of us. I need you. We need you. To push our evolution forward. You are participating in the evolution of what it means to be a human being on this earth. If you are female you are participating in the evolution of what it means to be a female on this earth. If you are Nigerian you are participating in the evolution of what it means to be Nigerian on this earth. If you’re schizophrenic you are participating in the evolution of what it means to be schizophrenic on this earth. Do you get that? Do you get why you are a part of it all? Do you get how your cosmic stardust and burst into being was essential to us all? This world belongs to you. We will not leave this place the way we found it.
I will say this again. You cannot disengage. You cannot choose to be blind to it all. Because you simply can’t be blind to it all. You will feel it creeping along your edges; the truth. You will catch wind of it in chilly winter months, or feel it within steamy sun rays. You cannot hide from it. And you know that.
We all must to vote.
We all must to peek behind the curtain.
We all must to take it upon ourselves to seek out truthful, credible information.
We all must read. We all must learn. We all must challenge what we believe to be true. We all must listen with an open heart. We all must have the strength and courage to admit what we do not know and then go out and find the answers.
We are a part of this world. Our governmental system is a part of that world. Our Congress, our Senate, our Speaker of the House, our Vice President, our Chairmen, our tax system, our carbon emission regulations, our school board representatives, our Supreme Court, our gun control laws, our health care system, our school system. It belongs to us. It is our responsibility. And if we don’t like it, and if it doesn’t work for us, then baby we need to plug in and shake shit up!
There are people pulling the strings. There are people writing the script and they would love nothing more than for your to live in your you-ness, and drown in your me-ness, and disappear.
You cannot unplug. You cannot check out. You cannot disengage. You are you for us, for we. We are here. We are here together. We are here now.
Let us paint our own tomorrow.
Please, realize your place in this all. Understand how small you are. Small like star. Your light is here for but a moment.