Photo: EliteRevolt
You want the truthful answer?
Breathe deeply and slowly with me as we explore... ok, here we go.
This is an important reminder that we are already beginning to have a series of discussions, or yelling matches, and potentially a whole lot of changes made coming up. People are going to start to asking questions, creating theories, grasping at trying to make sense of the world we are living in, and create initiatives to force a sense of safety. We can be quick to label each other to keep our feelings about the conversation itself safe, but if we just keep breathing, we can engage without panicking, and hopefully without creating irrational measures that reduce life and the ability to live it.
Let's take this forming theory, as pictured above. What I take from reading this, is that there are some in this country that would not put it past our own government to create a false flag. To create a Reichstag Fire. To create an opportunity to change the fabric of how our world operates and go to war with our own people or the people of the world.
Breathing...
Losing the Twin Towers and the lives in it on 9/11 is not what changed our world. How we responded to it did. And more accurately, how we let the response happen did. Before 9/11, we weren't engaged in any (of our own major) wars. No War on Terror. No Patriot Act. No Homeland Security. We didn't know about al-Qaeda or Bin Laden. There was no ISIS. We deported half the people we do today. Surveillance was a fraction of the size. We didn't have to take our shoes off at the airport or have our genitals exposed in RapiScans. We weren't having to "Opt Out" and get intimate pat downs every single time we fly (I do). Our police weren't militarized. We weren't getting random stops for searches just walking down the street. Our own Muslim neighbors weren't getting targeted and attacked, at least as freely and frequently.
We live a new normal. We are responsible for having accepted this as normal for the commitment to safety and security, at the expense of our own liberties. Now that it's normal, the temperature of our bubbling pot can continue to dial to boiling.
Breathing...
Whether or not this is today's Reichstag Fire, whether or not we have someone in office who is hell bent on power and control, or serving a higher master bent on world domination, willing to go to war with other countries or our own selves, or whether this was just an enigma of a situation from a deranged, broken, isolated, desensitized, hurting human who acted out in violence, is mostly irrelevant.
It's irrelevant when it comes to what we allow and push for next. We need to be mindful that we are going to either allow or deny for an entirely new generation of normal to take place. We need to understand how far we are willing to go, to tell ourselves we live in a safe world. To feel like we have a sense of control. Or what we are willing to give up for that illusion. And it is just an illusion. Until every single one of us lives inside of our own physical prison cell, heavily monitored and guarded, lead by heavily armed officers to each area of our lives to have our basic needs met, we will not have the physical security we may seek.
Learning how to not harm each other cannot be treated from the outside in, because it's what's inside us that causes us to harm. Our nature is to make quick, broad strokes so we can see the changes, even if those changes are more destructive and yield more repercussions later.
So do you still want the truthful answer? If so, keep breathing.
Healing, and safety, is only going to come with patience, resilience, and the willingness to do the work within each of our own selves and in our own homes and communities, so that in another generation's time, the change we seek will materialize.
We have to play the long game. And the long game is...
Love. It's community. It's knowing our neighbor is our family and ourselves. It's the empathy to feel that when someone else hurts, we hurt. It's making sure the person next to us knows they are not alone and that their feelings and perspectives matter just as much as our own. The long game is changing the way our children are educated and what we feed into their minds. The long game is picking up the trash on our streets, or not littering, to show that we respect the ground that we walk on. It's changing the way we grow, process, and eat food to show we care about our physical health.
It's changing the way we consume... everything. Changing what and how much we watch and listen to, to show we care about our emotional and mental health. The long game is changing the way we listen to, talk to, and touch each other, again to show we are seen, heard, and that our needs matter. It's learning how to cry. How to say, "I love you." How to hold eye contact and offer a smile. How to talk about our emotions, as men, as women. How to talk about menstruation, bodily functions and changes. How to talk about and how to listen to our pains, traumas, shames, and fears. How to understand identity and how to express and encourage them.
It's changing our definitions of success, away from material, status, and class hierarchy, instead toward experiencing life, creativity, connection, growth, and service. It's changing the way we allow ourselves to get busy and stuck, no longer feeling like prisoners to time. We have to change the way we strive to get others to consume and pay attention. It's changing the appetite of our economic machine and the way currency flows. It's turning off our city's lights at night to see we live in an infinite universe, to humble us, reminding us how small we are. How small our problems are. How quick we are here and gone.
Breathing...
We cannot look outside of our own shell of a body and demand somebody else create the changes, the rules, or the tools. It's you. It's me. It's we. It's how we spend the rest of today, then tomorrow, and each day after. Every decision, thought, word, and action.
It's every breath we have left.
Photo: NASA
Give this message to somebody directly and/or share this to your Wall. Otherwise only you and like 4 people saw it.