Prose

2 Oct 2016

Missing shingles and holes in the roof leave the house exposed to the elements.
Chandeliers with missing crystals coated in dust and cobwebs hang tenuously from their mounts.
The remnants of expensive wallpaper hangs loosely from the walls.
The once elegant kitchen smells of rot.
Fixtures are covered in corrosion.
Mold and mildew permeate the air.
The wood floors, now soft and rotten, have given way in places to expose the dark, dank basement.
Books that have been ravaged by water and time sit yellowed and wrinkled on warped shelves.
Unreadable.
Money, long ago, lost its value.
I vaguely remember the desperation I’d feel when I would lose my phone.
How silly social media was.
Arguing with strangers.
Strangers I would gladly hold and hug today.
I was never so sure of my ideologies.
What a luxury it was to have someone to hate.
I see how foolish I was, when I have no one to love.
I haven’t spoken to another human in years.
I don’t even know what time is any more.
It lost its use long ago.
The cement foundation is crumbling and brittle, leaving a wet gray sludge strewn across the floor.
I forgot the fear of death as desolation devoured my days.
Death, what a luxury.
Will today be the day the house finally falls?
Will I feel the debris crashing onto my body?
Oh, the luxury of pain.
I haven’t felt anything in so long.
Without any story to share, I stare.
Without the tension of death, I’ve lost the meaning of life.

Like a distant memory from the past, I say, “I’m ready”.
I’ll step into the abyss this time, I won’t turn in fear.
I welcome the looming darkness and deafening quiet.
I’m not afraid anymore.
Peering into the vast, open, and endless void, I willingly fall forward…

My senses flash like lightening in a storm.
With a start, I gasp as though I forgot to breathe.
I push myself up sharply and try to blink my world into focus.
I vaguely recall the dream of a personal apocalypse.
Pulled from the abyss, I’m bathing in the light of a distant looming rainbow.
Sitting on the swim dock with my sister.
Sailboats heeling.
My parents waving from the shore.
I promise I’ll never leave you!
I dive in and the cool crisp water envelops me.
Diving deeper and deeper, I turn towards the surface.
Spreading my arms wide, relaxing, and floating…
With a hard, swift kick I burst forth from a field of fresh dry powder.
The brisk mountain air kisses my cheeks.
Snow pouring over my chest.
My sister in stride.
Stay with me!
I’ll never leave you!
The steep pitch is perfect for the plentiful powder.
Charging forward, fearlessly, faster and faster.
The landscape, an unrecognizable blur.
My path, like the rhythm of a wave.
Bounding weightlessly.
The mountain sun, so bright.
I can hear my dog in the distance.
Howling, happy.
Is that coffee I smell?
But, she died years ago?

I wake up, confused.
My face mashed into a matted pillow, wet with drool.
Was I dreaming of a dream dreamt?
My head dizzy with deja vu.
The morning sun is pouring through my windows and my neighbor’s dog is barking. I hear my wife down stairs making espresso.
Disoriented, I grab my phone and text myself a quick note.

When I come home from work, I tell my wife, “I had the craziest dream.”
“What?” she says, distracted.
“I had the craziest dream. I wrote it down so I wouldn’t forget.”
“Oh…”
“It’s in my phone, I texted it to myself.”
“Oh”, She turns to look at me.
Here it is, “I awoke with a fright, only to realize, I was asleep while sleeping.”
“What does that even mean?” she says confused.
I’m not su…

Beep
Beep
Beep
Beep
Beep

Fumbling, I find my snooze.

28 Aug 2016

When you write, sometimes things turn on you.

That’s the power of the pen.

I wrote a piece last week that I didn’t end up posting. I tried to defend a notion of personal responsibility that I had, but it didn’t hold up the way I expected.

I tried to start with a relatively benign aspect of personal responsibility before I dove into the more contentious.

If it looks like it’s going to rain, do you bring an umbrella…?
If you’re going into the mountains or onto the ocean, do you take time to prepare?
If you’re going to ride a motorcycle or travel, do you take special precautions?
I questioned the relationship of personal responsibility and drinking alcohol.
I looked at personal responsibility with regard to ethnic minorities, homosexuality, bigotry, and prejudice.
I suggested personal responsibility could play a role in limiting the difficulties, trauma, and negativity people encounter.
I’ve had enough conversations with people to know I was on shaky ground.
This was a touchy subject. However, I really thought I had something.
After setting up this idea, I tried to defend it by asking if human violence is natural.
All evidence suggests it is part of our natural world.
I thought, if it is, why is it that we feel so strongly about avoiding the topic of personal responsibility when someone is victimized by another person? I found it odd that most people aren’t averse to discussing personal responsibility when someone is hurt by something like an avalanche or a motorcycle accident. But, personal responsibility seems to be a taboo subject when a human enacts violence on another human.
I understand, there is no excuse for violent crime!
It’s bewildering when a human hurts another human. We desperately want to make sense of the assailant’s behavior.
They broke the most basic and fundamental laws we set for humanity.
A tight dress doesn’t mean “touch me.”
Diamonds and jewelry don’t say “rob me.”
Yet, violent crime happens.
On the Serengeti, it is the weak and infirm that are the most vulnerable.
We as humans are not immune to this biological truth.
That’s the way of the jungle.
So I had to ask is there any room for discussing personal responsibility in “the jungle”?
Predators are looking for weakness, vulnerability, and opportunity.
Our body language, the way we dress, the people we are spend our time with, all communicate something to the outside world.
The outfits we wear present an identity.
A priest collar or a motorcycle gang patch…
A business suit or Carhartt’s…
A burka or Birkenstocks…
A tube top or a fur coat…
They all say very different things about the person you project into the world.
Recognize what you are transmitting into your surroundings.
Listen, learn, adapt.
I suggested to teach your children that the world isn’t fair.
Teach them that they cannot control their environment, but they can control the way they respond to it.
Teach them that there is pride and strength in personal responsibility.
Teach them that personal responsibility, integrity, and self awareness are of the highest value.

I felt like I had defended this idea of personal responsibility in relation to violence in a novel way.
But, it wasn’t the answer I thought it was.
It’s not that simple
There is another side to this argument.
Something that can’t be resolved.
Really bad things happen to people who seem to do everything right.
This idea negated the argument I was trying to formulate.
Personal responsibility will not protect you.
Life is a bit more like a slot machine.
Sometimes we wear our lucky hat when we pull the lever…
Personal responsibility is like a lucky hat.
You can do everything right, but in the end,
No one is immune from violence.
Bad things can happen to anyone, at any time.
I got caught up in some self righteous ideas.
I was wrong.
Evil is a subjective reality.
Life is akin to the ouroboros.
The snake that’s consuming its own tail.
Blind to the source of its nourishment… It’s very own decomposition.
It’s the nature of things.
A biological truth, a biological imperative.
This thing we judge as evil and good, happy or sad, that’s a misunderstanding.
Good and evil are subjective realities. Stories that conscious beings who developed the ability to communicate, share with each other. Subjective reality is egoic.
There is no ego in objective reality. Interestingly, it can also be seen as a metaphor for compost. The source of beauty and harmony disguised as entropy. A compost of rot and decay that sprouts fruits and flowers. The fruit and the filth are of the same source. We don’t want it to be, but it is. The beauty you see, is death and decay transformed. Just as the rot that makes you retch is the source of everything you love.
I lost sight of that with this piece.
I forgot that no amount of control will remove you from the snake’s mouth.
Good and evil are an illusion.
What you think you are, is an illusion.
You’re the monster you demonize.
You’re the saint you canonize.
You can’t escape evil, because you are the evil you see.
You can’t find love, because you are love.
Subjective realities are not objective realities.
You can’t dodge the reaper. You are the reaper.
You are the care taker and the saint.
You’re the murderer and the thief.
This is all to say, nothing can protect you.
Do you get it?
You are nothing.
No-Thing…
Don’t understand?
It’s the ego, the story you’ve told yourself, the thing you so desperately want to believe. It isn’t true.
You’re no-thing.
Ooof, that hurts, but that’s the objective truth.
I guess, if you’d like to, you could look at it in a different way.
You’re everything.
Everything known and unknown.
A thing that turns over and into itself. A cauldron of rich compost that births hydrogen and humans and galaxies and glaciers.
You are the source, and of the source.
You are everything know and unknown.
This oneness, this everythingness, is the quiet we bump into. It is the quiet we fear. It is the deafening silence that swallows us whole.
It’s the primal void.
It’s pure darkness and pure light.
It’s everything and nothing.
Every little bubbling urp that percolates up from the primordial compost is consciousness.
Humans, an aspect of primordial consciousness.
An aspect of consciousness that has the ability to recognize itself.
A self that it can see as separate,
With a separate path.
Paths clouded in self-righteousness.
Forgetting that your role is not only of a purposeful life but also of a purposeful death.
Birth, life, and death, a cosmic fusion.
You are simultaneously that one thing.
You are the compost that life sprouts from.
From you, galaxies will be born.
From you, the universe was, and will be.
The source of the trees and symphonies.
The you,
And the me.

Although, that’s not to say personal responsibility is an entirely bad idea.

Wink, wink…

Addendum: The reason I chose personal responsibility as a topic is because it played a pivotal role in resolving personal issues that I carried with me for years. It was such a powerful tool for me I thought it would translate into the topic of empowering people and deterring victimization. It didn’t hold up the way I thought it would. Such is the power of the pen.

7 Aug 2016

I seem to be amongst of a lot of conflict these days.
Doesn’t everything seem to have a political connotation to it?
The car you drive,
The food you eat,
The phone you use,
The movies you see…
You mention certain words and tempers flare.
Reactionary tendencies resulting in snap judgments.
There’s even conflict amongst my long time friends and family.
Just the other day, a co-worker said something about the elections.
I said something, and… FIREWORKS!
The tension in the back room has been high. People are frustrated.
I should have… well, you know.
After the incident, a coworker said, “I agree with you. You just picked the wrong audience.”
Maybe she is right?
I can easily see how my comments were seen as inflammatory.
As far as I know, most of my coworkers are liberal; some trending towards hard line. We represent a diverse group of people who have successfully worked together for years. Asians, whites, blacks, gays and straights, women and men, young and old. The diversity of culture is impressive in a group of fewer than fifty.
I appreciate that.
A coworker said I’m the most neutral person she knows; “I don’t know if you’re a democrat or a republican.”
I laughed, and said, “That’s the nicest thing someone has said to me all day.”
She suggested I must really be in conflict deciding who to vote for?
This is where it came off the rails.
Feeling a bit jaded from all the political hyperbole, I said, “It doesn’t matter. The presidential election isn’t a popular vote anyway.”
Enter the metaphorical shit storm!
The conversation sped into a vitriolic cesspool of ranting.
I was told, “Not voting is incredibly irresponsible!”
Wait, what? “I didn’t say I wasn’t voting!?”
I tried to interject, “I was referring to the electoral college…”
More anger, “You’re irresponsible!” “That’s a lie.”
Not recognizing this wasn’t going anywhere, I continued asserting my perspective.
“The electoral college varies state by state; it’s got its positive and negative points like…”
“The electoral college has elected a president that didn’t win the popular vote.”
Fully agitated, a co-worker said, “That’s a conspiracy theory!”
“What?” My head was reeling.
I tried to explain the popular vote doesn’t need to be adhered to by the electorate in all states.
More people interjected, “Why wouldn’t you vote! It’s so important! Don’t you understand how important it is?!”
Another person, “This year? This election!? Don’t you understand how irresponsible you’re being?! I’m over you!”
I was sweating as though I was being deposed in a criminal investigation.
Reasserting myself, “I never said I’m not voting!”
Someone else said, “If you vote third party…!”
Holy shit, what’s happening! How did I get here? My co-workers are furious with me!
I was aggravated with myself that I got caught up this argument.
Beaten, I slinked out of the back room just as a few more people curiously came in to see what was going on.
My head was spinning. Did I get it wrong? Do I really not understand how our president is elected?
Doing what I do, I start to dig.
Nope, the electoral college does exist, it is a thing. They do choose the president and the way it’s set up does allow for the possibility of the electorate to supersede the popular vote outcome.
There also seems to be a lot I didn’t understand.
The electoral college is confusing. There are a stunning amount of variables that are subject to change, state by state, year by year.
It’s no wonder there is so much confusion about the how our president is elected.
I think the argument I had at work was truly born from the divisiveness we are all bombarded with on a regular basis.
This political polarity is akin to sweaty old dynamite.
It appears as though our community is crumbling, and I don’t mean my work place.
I’m speaking about the community at large, on a national scale.
The stress, fear and blaming is fracturing relationships, new and old.
Political ideologues are creating walls.
I hear people swearing off anyone who supports the opposition.
Our ability to speak openly, without fear of reprisal, is waning.
The electoral college is very complex and I don’t claim to understand all of it. The shame is the electoral college might be worth discussing. Especially if you believe in a one person, one vote system.
The presidential election is not a popular vote.
It just isn’t.
For better or for worse, we are a nation governed by laws.
From my perspective, the Patriot Act destroyed many components of the US Constitution that made our nation great.
My lack of understanding of the Patriot Act doesn’t make those laws any less real.
As “they” say, ignorance of the law is no excuse.
The Patriot Act might be something worth discussing, don’t you think?
We know it was passed without being fully read or understood. Do you think it’s wise that we continue to maintain our ignorance regarding a document that fundamentally changed our nation?
The problem that I see is that we don’t even discuss certain vital topics during elections.
As though they don’t exist.
Isn’t it ironic that what we don’t discuss has the largest consequences?
For example, the drone program. It’s not even on the table.
No one is talking about it?
Is the perceived safety of the drone program worth the “collateral damage” and the “radicalization” that’s regularly occurring do to “collateral damage”?
Listen to those words. What do they even mean?
What an obscure way of talking about the consequences of killing innocent people.
Is it worthwhile to discuss global nuclear proliferation and the treaties we ignore as a nation?
Is it worthwhile discussing the covert war that has been taking place over the past 15 years led by joint special operations command, otherwise known as J.S.O.C.?
Whistleblowing? Is it worth while discussing? Why as a nation are we so willing to marginalize the whistleblower?
When did reporting criminal activity become a crime? When the crimes are committed by those in power?
Yet, we as a nation don’t demand this be a part of the national discussion.
In my experience, people are limiting the conversation by engaging at one of these three levels:

1) Righteously regurgitating rhetoric to the like minded.
2) Arguing with a closed mind, and adamantly adhering to forgone conclusions.
3) Avoiding controversial topics all together.

Have any of these ever resulted in the change we all aspire to?
If it has, you have to admit, it’s extraordinarily rare.
So if this doesn’t affect change, what will.
Change is a personal choice.
Growth is a personal choice.
Accepting that it’s literally impossible to understand every side of every topic with regard to every perspective. That’s humbling, right?
Which leaves you with what?
What you think you know is likely one sided and possibly wrong.
So, incorporating doubt into your ideology would be logical, don’t you think?
What does doubt offer? Humility.
It’s difficult to recognize, there are likely many ways to say the same thing.
Humility opens you to alternative perspectives.
The Spanish word “agua” doesn’t make water any less watery. Do you see the analogy?
Often times, we all want the same thing, but it’s our perception, and our inability to communicate that perception, that is the barrier between us and the view point we see as oppositional. That is to say, perspective is often times an insurmountable wall.
You and I will never have the same perspective.
You cannot stand where I stand and I cannot stand where you stand.
No matter how righteous you feel about your perspective, your perspective is yours alone.
Recognize that.
Now think about what that does to our ability to communicate.
The only thing that can help us communicate is radical empathy.
Push yourself, however uncomfortably, into the oppositional perspective.
This is not to say you have to surrender your perspective…
If you can just see them, for a moment.
If you can just be them, for a moment.
Then you can just honor them, for a moment.
Then you can have compassion for them.
This is a place that compromise is possible.
This is a workable model for change.
But, it’s up to us…

31 Jul 2016

I’m a man.
This was my world…
Unattainable needs and desires.
Pushed and persuaded by twisted ideologies.
Simplistic sexual relationships.
Liquor, the elixir.
Greed, paramount.
Complacency, a goal.
Apathetic about my apathy.
Shiny cars adorned with large breasted women.
Boats with blonds stretched out across their bows.
Friends whispering syrupy gossip about each other.
Relationships with God were similar to relationships with Santa Clause
Rudolph’s gleaming red nose, stretching longer and longer.
I grew up in a world where we applauded the skillful, lying politician.
The paramount concern was profit over people.
I grew up in a world where men with feelings were sissies.
I grew up in a world where shrinks were only for quacks.
I grew up in a world where I was told everyone had the same opportunities.
The only obstacle was your willingness to pull yourself up by the boot straps.
I too became a lier, with the proficiency of a politician.
I lied about who I was and where I was going. I lied to those who I loved because I loved a lie.
All the teachers I knew lived this lie.
The syrupy sweet lie.
An entire culture dependent on ignoring the… in the living room.
I am a man.
I’m on a path of recovery.
Will you recover with me?
Male complacency is becoming common place.
Men, we can be so much fuller than we are.
Woman changed their world, so can we.
They are taking on roles of leaders, care takers, and policy makers.
But there’s still so much oppression! I see that.
I’d argue the oppression will not cease by continuing to solely make women stronger. Males need to evolve too. Males and females are one. One does not exist without the other. We can’t expect to achieve the peace and equality we all desire, and disregard one of the sexes.
Many now regard females as the superior sex. They’re evolving at a rate that’s leaving men befuddled and scratching their heads.
What’s key to understand is that women’s liberation is connected to male liberation. Until men are understood to be equally worthy and capable by women, and men themselves, the imbalance and inequality we fight against will continue.
The hit television show, The Simpsons, expresses the imbalance that I’m referring to.
Homer Simpson’s boss, Mr. Burns, the megalomaniacal oppressor, represents the archetype of the industrious insidious male. The archetype that women’s rights and feminism was born from and revolted against.
This isn’t the archetype we want to model. I think most of us are in agreement on that.
Even the show depicts Mr. Burns as old and out of fashion.
Which is good, right?
Yes, but…
The problem is what the men have evolved into.
Homer Simpson represents the lovable, yet low level, knuckle dragging buffoon, who hasn’t surrendered to his biological inferiority and is still fighting the un-winnable fight.
Bart Simpson is the apathetic, lazy, and cynical deviant. The product of a culture that’s so mired in apathy, there’s no expectation for him to be anything but his deviant self.
These are the male archetypes we as society have resigned ourselves to: the incompetent, naughty male with little to no emotional intelligence, or the old fashion dictatorial male oppressor. This is so thoroughly pervasive in contemporary society that “male bashing” slips past the lips like bigotry in the era of Rosa Parks and M.L.K.
I hear these archetypes thoughtlessly reinforced every day. Mothers proudly referencing their successful daughters saying gleefully, “Well, she is a girl!” or expressing the same sentiment, tainted with sullen apathy, with regard to their sons, “Well, you know boys.”
I see grown men, mired in their own shame, propagating these cultural archetypes. Laughing off their stereotypical low level development looking for a sympathetic, there, there. You can see they’re ashamed of their essence.
It reminds me of a tendency I used to have. I’d hold the door twice as long for a black person. Trying to subtly say, I’m sorry.
I was so confused.
In the face of black, I was ashamed of white.
Primarily because I was so disconnected from the culture I was trying to empathize with. It took me years to see black culture and history for what it was, vital and beautiful. While simultaneously maintaining my own sense of personal vitality and beauty.
This is what men need to do with regard to women. Raise them up. See them, honor them, embrace their power, and honor their history and plight. Teach your sons. Teach them to treat women like they are powerful and elegant queens.
Women, recognize your part too. Don’t play the role of victim. Encouraging this negative perception of men will only hold you down. Embrace your men. Honor their strength. Empathize with their fear of emotions and the legacy that’s demanded that of them. Teach your daughters that the strong alpha males are the boys who brave their emotions. Teach your daughters to build up their men, not tear them down. Teach them to treat their men as wise, noble kings.
I heard a story on NPR years ago that’s worth acknowledging. The piece was focusing on the negative relationship of boys and virtual reality. The first part of the story discussed gaming. The findings suggested boys were more motivated by their virtual environments than by physical and social connections. The motivation and accolades from sport and academics paled in comparison to the motivation and achievements made in the hierarchical structure of their virtual gaming world, a world with very few girls. Which ties directly to the second aspect of this story, boys didn’t seem interested in real girls. They had their needs met by the perfectly polished girls who were at their beck and call in the virtual world. No social expectations, no hair out of place, every dream and physical variety indulged on demand. The boys talked about being grossed out by real girls.
The doctor doing this study found the girls’ response alarming. Less than fifty percent of girls saw themselves wanting to get married. When asked why, the girls exclaimed, “Would you want to marry them?!”
These dark aspects of society have been exemplified in the movies, Kids and Super Bad.
Both disturbing depictions of male development in the modern era.
So what’s the point of this?
Half of humanity is dying on the vine.
We are all familiar with the Yin Yang symbol, which is referred to as Taijitu in Taoism. A symbol of harmonic symbiotic balance, the Yin, the female; the Yang, the male.
A symbol of the cosmic interplay of balance.
We are out of balance, males and females.
The symbolism of the Taijitu, with its profound wisdom, can guide us, males and females, into balance and higher states of consciousness.
The Taijitu is representative of all manifest reality and the interplay of balance that is forever occurring.
To understand the Taijitu you need to understand what it represents.
Nothing has meaning without its opposite
There is no light without dark.
There is no life without death.
Short is meaningless without long.
The only way to recognize peace is by knowing war.
Manifestation is held in balance and recognized by its opposition.
Yin Yang…
That’s relatively easy to see.
What’s less clear is the space surrounding the Taijitu. It is the source of creation and potentials, un-manifested and un-realized.
The Taijitu is nothing without the space surrounding it.
Just as humanity is nothing without everything surrounding it.
That space represents the vastness of creation, the source of Taijitu.
Waking up to your connection with this source is the path to your liberation.
In this “waking up”, everything becomes clear.
A rebirth.
An entirely new state of consciousness.
Men aren’t threatened by powerful women and powerful men don’t threaten.
Your bliss is my bliss.
Your power is my power.
Your equality is my equality.
Clarity in oneness.
Raise your boys and girls from this state of consciousness.

24 Jul 2016

We are becoming more aware and full as our consciousness continues to expand.
That’s a difficult thing to do.
Growing is always hard.
I grew up in a Methodist family. It seemed like Lutherans were essentially the same as us. The Christians that spoke in tongues and baptized adults in local lakes and river seemed odd. Catholics, weren’t good. No one actually said that to me, but that’s what was implied.
Although I’d heard of them, I didn’t know any Jews or anything about the them aside from this strange notion that they were the chosen people, whatever that meant.
Muslims? I didn’t know that was a thing.
There were a hand full of black people in my school. Actually, most were biracial. One, that I know of, was adopted. As far as I knew, they were raised just like me, why wouldn’t they be? My grandpa called certain Christmas nuts, nigger toes. My first job, we were told, you can have Martin Luther King Day off, if you’re black. No one was. Black jokes were just as common as blonde jokes.
We knew a handful of Mexicans, they were cool. We had tacos once a week, but I didn’t like the hot sauce.
Russians were scary. They wanted to hurt us. We practiced hiding under our desks in case they tried.
I didn’t even know gay was a thing…
That pretty much sums it up.
Oh, we’d get Chinese food sometimes; Chicken Chow Mein and Egg Foo Young. I didn’t like it very much, but the fortune cookies were fun.
Maybe I represent an extreme, I’m not sure. I’m sure many people had more diverse upbringings than I did. But, I bet most of us wouldn’t have to go back many generations to find the cultural norm that I was raised with. I’m sure this continues to be the norm for many today.
I remember being jealous of friends who had gay friends. I wanted to be diverse. I also remember being called gay when I did have gay friends. It didn’t take long before I was overtly exclaiming that I liked girls to people I’d meet.
While a senior in high school, I remember referring to a person as mulatto and being harshly corrected. I didn’t know it was derogatory. It took me years to find out why.
Aside from Canada, I was 23 the first time I left the United States. I went to Cabo San Lucas. It was fun, but the ocean was cold. The Mexicans seemed nice. Honestly, I didn’t think about it much. I went to Europe for three months, a year later. Language and food were the biggest obstacles. This taught me to let go of very basic expectations and embrace the unknown. It was Central and South American countries that really opened my eyes. It took years to integrate everything I’d learned into any sort of cohesive understanding.
That growth process was difficult and challenging.
It took me years to see gays as no different than me.
I was forty when I met my wife. She was the first black girl I’d ever dated.
Actually, she’s biracial.
It was after our first date that I found out she’s Muslim.
It scared me.
That was hard for me to process. I didn’t have any overtly negative feelings regarding Muslims. Yet, the fear was real.
I’ll never forget, within minutes of the twin towers falling, I wondered what had we done to make someone so angry with us? That’s the way I see the world.
I typically tend to be empathetic. Possibly too much, I’m not sure.
Incidentally, this was another growth opportunity. This was the first time I realized my republican friends were saying, “How dare they do that to us!” Something entirely different than what my democrat friends were saying. Albeit, the right wing reply was a reasonable response, but a distinctly different way of viewing the world. It was then that I realized, we both needed each other.
Growth…
It was 9/11 that inspired me to explore the darker side of the political arena. This is how I began to understand how convoluted and nefarious global politics can be.
Painful realizations, though I felt fuller because of it.
My consciousness expanded.
When Fatima prayed in front of me for the first time, it frightened me at a primal root level.
I hated this.
It was, and is, difficult to acknowledge.
It honestly took me years to detach the falling twin towers from her style of prayer, a practice of selfless gratitude.
Such is the power of media and the unconscious mind.
I’ve fasted with her for Ramadan four times. Before I met her, I’m not entirely sure I’d even heard of Ramadan. Ramadan forced me to surrender my wants and needs like nothing else. This wasn’t a community or social event for me. This was my hunger and thirst. I was the one who was tired and had to slow down, letting go of my wants and needs for an entire lunar cycle. I needed to learn to pace myself and let go of my desires. I did it to support Fatima, but this was no passive exercise. It’s not that simple. I can’t tell you how many times I would empathize with the Muslim stranger on the street knowing they were likely fasting as well.
These were difficult realizations that I had to fight hard for.
Again, I was richer and fuller, but it didn’t come easy.
Fatima brought me to Eid celebrations. Again, as dumb as I feel saying this, I was surprised that they were remarkably similar to the cultural celebrations I was raised with, aside from the different costumes and food.
People laughed and made meals, in which they took great pride.
Their homes were beautifully decorated.
Everyone wore clothes they were proud of.
Still growing…
Just this year, I was explaining Fatima’s heritage to my son and I told him she was African and Italian. My intent was to embrace her African heritage. My thought was, there is no sense muddying up her African-ness with any suffix. After all, I wasn’t German American.
Fatima corrected me, “Actually, black people in the United States don’t have the privilege of knowing our heritage because our ancestors were slaves. This is why we are African American not African.”
Still growing.
Still painful.
Still hard.
Think of how far we have come as a culture.
We are all infinitely richer and fuller than our ancestors.
Think about it.
Maybe you were a raised in an entirely different culture than me, but the bigotry and prejudice was likely there, at some point, somewhere. We are all the same.
We distrust the outsider.
We are fearful of what we don’t know or understand.
This amalgamation of multiculturalism and the struggle around it, is a global phenomena.
What we are experiencing is growing pains.
Letting go of the old.
Merging with the new.
Expanding our consciousness.
It’s hard.
It takes time.
Have patience.
Be compassionate.

17 Jul 2016

24 hour news sources streaming their perspectives into our minds.
What is the news?
What are the ramifications of watching the news and absorbing its content?
Could the news ever, even in its most idealized form, tell the entire truth?
If that’s not possible, what is the news saying?
Ten years ago I was getting a coffee and the barista told me something that shocked her. While studying for her masters degree in sociology, she was shocked to learn, contrary to popular belief, that the incidences of child abductions have actually decreased in the modern era.
I don’t think it’s necessary to draw out the implications of this, is it?
Where do children play today?
Every moment planned; security a paramount goal.
At what cost?
Earlier and more structured programs pushing specialization and idealization. Camps and programs that optimize the greatest opportunities we as parents can imagine. Scouts quietly lurking around the corner pushing the limits we as society have set for them. All the while, pretending we aren’t selling our youth. We cover our mouths and feign surprise, yet double down in hope that it’s our child they see.
The importance of egoic ideation paramount.
Subtle, yet hysterical and unrecognized oppression.
Creativity quelled.
Where is the mystery and the imagination? Where are the days that a child wakes up early, on their own, to run out the door to embrace creativity and unknown adventure? Where are the moments to feel loneliness and boredom? Where are the moments that we aren’t providing an unrealistic, unsustainable reality for our children?
Gone, erased by the urgency to make role-call in the gilded halls of extraordinary ideations.
This lack of space, lack of trust, due to the belief that our kids are not safe growing up the way we did.
This perspective, built brick by brick.
Fear your neighbor.
Your children will be harmed.
Today we have dismantled so much of what our grandfathers fought for because of terrorism.
We relent to this new world vision and fear based ideology. We allow our phones to be tapped and our emails to be read. We strip ourselves down and submit to full body scans to travel, throwing away our liquids and lotions. We condone search and seizure, torture, and imprisonment without due process.
For what?
Security?
Some of us know this isn’t right; others justify it.
Ultimately, our fear and desire for security pacifies us. So, we stay quiet.
Security from what?
An illusion.
The probability that a terrorist is going to kill you is astonishingly low.
You are 187 times more likely to starve to death in America than be killed by terrorism. Do you hear that? Starve to death, in the United States? 187 times more likely! That’s atrocious!
Yet, we so willingly shed our rights and demand our leaders keep us safe from terrorism.
Terrorists aren’t going to kill you.
Heart disease is going to kill you.
Cancer is going to kill you.
The contradictions perpetuated by the news regarding our greatest dangers are ridiculous.
Yet the news continues to repeat, terrorism, Islam, Jihad, terrorism, Islam, Jihad… over and over. Attaching every atrocity to terrorism… the bull horn of the 24 hour news agencies touting the murderous, war mongering middle eastern muslim who hates our freedom.
Terrorism, Islam, Jihad, terrorism, Islam, Jihad!!!
Reactionary alarmism.
What you don’t hear is you’re more likely to be killed by an elevator, a falling TV, or a christmas tree that has caught on fire!
Ridiculous, isn’t it?
Heart disease kills 610,000 people per year which accounts for 23.53% of all deaths in just United States! Cancer accounts for 22.52% and kills 580,000! That’s nearly 50% of all deaths.
Where is the outrage for those who oppress our health?
Why do our supermarkets continue to peddle such dangerous contraband?
Our televisions actively promoting the killers’ agendas…
Yet, no one seems to care.
No state run security agencies to quell the proliferation of processed foods.
No global intelligence network attempting to quash the nefarious sugar cabal.
This sounds ridiculous, right?
Yet, we fail to see the ridiculousness of what we do to protect ourselves from a risk manufactured by fallacious illusions.
The news is the tool developing this unsubstantiated, irrational, sense of foreboding.
Bolstering fear and inciting the need for retaliation.
Supporting the perception of our security or lack there of.
Do you see the irony?
The news is lying to you.
The news is a tool to tell you what to think about, when to think about it, and how to think about it. The news is a tool to tell what the oppositional positions are and how to criticize them. The news is a tool that confines the argument into specific arenas. The news is a tool by which intellectual discourse is limited. The news supports and hides certain agendas.
The news is propaganda.
The news has an agenda… to support capitalism/big money/big power.
I’d argue it’s a sales vehicle.
Selling Cheetos, mouthwash, guns, government, ships, pills, planes, resources, and rockets.
Let go of all of your fear; turn off the news. It’s all a sham.
Think critically
Choose love
Be love
Live love

10 Jul 2016

I’d immersed myself in the exploration of darkness years ago and seen it for what it was, a reflection of myself. A painful realization that I was, at one time, blind to. Seeing what I needed to see, I’d moved on and closed that chapter in my life. I was done. Paradoxically, over ten years later, I stumbled upon Sibel Edmonds, an FBI whistleblower, with a radical integrity that deeply inspired me. I had to laugh as I questioned why I was so compelled to devour her book, Classified Woman. It has been years since I’ve touched anything of this nature. Her ability to stand up and speak the truth within the intelligence community, in which exists a cultural paradigm of intimidation and fear, was revolutionary and deeply inspiring. She exhibited an utter disregard for her personal security. The emotions I felt as I read her book were quite intimidating and revealing to me. Revealing in a way that forced me to see that most likely, I’d not have the courage to do what she did. Not something I’m proud to admit.

This left me pondering a few things. First, the idea of breaking free from your cultural paradigm is an extraordinary thing to do. Second, what does this idea say about breaking free from our egoic identity? Are there parallels?

I ended up digging through my bookshelves in search of a connecting thread. As usual, I was surprised by what I found. Scott Peck’s book, People of the Lie, jumped out at me. I’d read it in 2007. It’s near the end of the book that he explores an idea he calls “group evil”. An idea that may shed light on what Sibel experienced and why so many people participated in repressing her with their silence.

I was amazed at how directly and thoroughly this FBI whistleblower, Sibel Edmonds, was repressed by all branches of our government. It is beyond the scope of possibility that everyone in the FBI, judicial system, executive branch, and intelligence community are intertwined in a nefarious cabal. I was forced to recognize an alternative. Seemingly natural tribal assimilations repress deep individual value systems that allow, what Peck refers to, as group evil. This is a thread that seems to run deep within humanity and remains a formidable road block in personal truth, critical thinking, and integrity.

A source of group evil, according to Peck, is the compartmentalization and specializations in our culture. This allows us to avoid larger and more comprehensive responsibilities that seem to lie outside of our immediate control. The average large corporate structure offers a basic example of how this works. Low level managment is asked to perform an unethical task. They’re able to admonish themselves of responsibility by surrendering their responsibility to mid level management. This behavior continues all the way to the top of the hierarchical structure. Mid levels defer to the VPs. The VPs use the executives, or CEO, as scapegoats and the CEO uses the board of directors. The board of directors then claims they are beholden to the demands of the investors. Nowhere is personal responsibility required. The entire chain of command somehow enjoys freedom of responsibility from the unethical practices of a soulless and seemingly benign entity. This is even more exaggerated in hierarchical government and military structures. Lower level individuals choosing to set aside their personal integrity with the goal of moving up the hierarchical structure, avoiding peer based reprisal, or blindly accepting that the people in charge know better than you. This is quite often a story we tell ourselves to bury our moral and intellectual laziness. Regardless of the reasoning, the group evil is maintained. Manicured into something the ego or micro culture can even be proud of. Which, quite simply, means large groups of people are much more able and likely to conspire or ignore unethical and/or immoral behavior through dismissing personal responsibility to an abstract “other”.

Our culture tosses around ideas like “conspiracy theory” with little thought. It’s an easy and dismissive term because the implications of a large cabal of evil-doers is beyond our scope of reason. Many people argue that if the “conspiracy” were actually true, there would be no way that a group of people this large could maintain a paramount level of secrecy/complacency. But the reality of human nature is absolutely the opposite. Not only will most people say nothing, but they will lash out at those who do to protect themselves and the organization that provides them security. Look at our pop culture whistleblowers and the way they are marginalized in society if you question this idea. It comes as no surprise that as a greater number of people maintain their silence, others are encouraged to maintain future silence. The cultural rogue is less and less likely to emerge.

The staggering amount of people that are privy to this information is shocking. Their ability to maintain the status quo, silence, and secrecy knowing the great harm that will fall on others really best describes the concept known as group evil.

This is also prevalent in less established cultural structures such as personal politics, religious persuasions and/or institutions, and racial and sexual identities. Hypocrisy is rampant. The ability to judge others of opposing persuasions and identities is easy for us to point out. What’s harder to see and acknowledge is our willingness to sweep under the rug inconsistencies and hypocrisies that undermine our ideological/egoic perspectives. All for fear of losing a component of our identity that we have so carefully crafted.

This whole topic may seem off compared to what I usually spend my time writing about. At a subtle level, this idea of group evil ties directly into the concept of waking up/self awareness. This is directly related to the mechanism that maintains our collective delusion.

Those that strive for internal peace/enlightenment often misunderstand the path that is necessary. We know that ego is an obstacle but how we surmount it is often misunderstood. The idea of having to let go of ego/identity is beyond the scope of most. Absolving ourselves of all identity is unimaginable. We fool ourselves into believing we just need to rid ourselves of the aspects of our identity/egoic self that we see as negative. This isn’t the truth.

Ultimately, it’s our need to oblige and intertwine ourselves into mass culture which supports group evil. It’s the cultural expectation of an egoic ideation that maintain our adherence to our egoic ideation. A circular ideology that feeds itself. The cultural expectations are the ruling force. In fact, from an early age, identity is what we are taught to strive for. Ribbons and pieces of paper that separate us from others declaring us to be something special. Those that gain the most cultural recognition are positioned as though they fly above us all. Their identities become almost super human and god-like as we shine brighter and brighter lights on them. The accolades showered upon these cultural icons maintain a seemingly unsurmountable barrier suggesting and maintaining our perceived inferiority. Even our spiritual leaders, like the Pope or the Dalai Lama, are projected to have something we don’t. This isn’t something they’ve declared; it’s a cultural identity that has been overly inflated. This truly causes more repression than anything. The subtle suggestion that you aren’t that. It is our self imposed egoic ideations that clouds our essence, an essence that’s within all of us. It’s when we commit to removing the false self that we can be reintroduced with our greater self. To step away from identity is not something that is overtly practiced, expected, or encouraged in our culture. We have very few known spiritual leaders and because of the nature of awakening, those who have awakened are often silent. Self awareness/awakening is the rebirth that humanity desires but doesn’t fully comprehend. It is the unbroken thread that connects us all. To see this and live this universal truth is the next evolutionary step. A state of consciousness where group evil has no room to breath and integrity has no barriers.

19 Jun 2016

Things are going to be alright

There seems to be an idea that things aren’t going well.
A fundamental question that is vital to examine is, is the world evolving or devolving?
It seems so much of what I see in pop culture are stories of devolving suggesting de-evolution. Stories that center on an idea that order is being lost.
Regardless of your political, religious, or ideological persuasion it seems there’s a pining for a past time.
A simpler time when order was understood.
A time of plenty and bounty when there was enough for everyone.
A time that hard work was the rule not the exception.
A time of respect and dignity in community
A time of compassion
A time when intellectualism was valued and aspired to.
I question the idea that we are falling apart.
I see a state of flourishing abundance every day. I have faith in evolution. Not the limited darwinian view but a view that includes the growth and expansion of consciousness and the merger of spirit.
Do you want to see the true nature of humanity? Look at New York during 9/11. Five hundred thousand people evacuated by boat in nine hours. All of the bridges and trains on Manhattan Island were closed. Strangers came together and took care of each other. Our infrastructure failed and human compassion flourished. Over six thousand five hundred travelers were housed and fed by people like you and me. Everyday normal folks, when their planes were forced to land the morning of 9/11 in Newfoundland. An entire community came together to embrace these foreign travelers. Does community even cover this? Think of these numbers! Everyone had food and shelter! That’s amazing! What a stunning outpouring of love and compassion. This is a repeating story. Snow storms in Minnesota bring out the best; people shoveling and pushing out strangers. A tornado that tore through central Minneapolis brought out people with gloves, rakes, and chainsaws eager to help their neighbors. While riding my motorcycle to the Sturgis rally I broke down. Dozens of people helped me, in ways that still shock me. The skinny kid who wasn’t on a Harley and I was fully embraced. Traveling all over the world I’ve been helped by total strangers over and over again.
The love and compassion I’ve consistently been shown has fundamentally changed me.
It’s the belief that we’re on our own that bolsters these ideas of isolation, greed, and selfishness. This is not our natural state. Our natural state is that of community.
We are fundamentally one.
We thrive together.
Last year, I told my son about a big thing that had just happened in our country. I said, “Gay marriage was legalized.” He looked at me with utter confusion, “Haven’t they always been able to be married?”
There it is, out of the mouths of babes.
Love is love
An uncorrupted simplistic truth
His natural instinct, unencumbered by any dogmatic fear based belief.
An evolution at the core of a revolution
He sees no color and is perplexed when I bring it up.
An example of a metamorphosis that my generation was a part of.
He doesn’t judge creed. He’s respectful of his Hindu and Muslim friends.
During Christmas he doesn’t boast to his friends about the things he’s received.
He wasn’t told to do this. He’s just naturally respectful of others.
Understanding that not everyone has had the same experience he’s had.
Children, the great barometer of society
An undeniable metric of evolution
While out for dinner with a friend, he hinted that the world was falling apart; unable to sustain its complexities.
I asked him, as an artist, what’s the source of inspiration for your best work?
His answer was, “It’s weird, I can’t quite explain it. It comes from a place outside of me, almost like I’m downloading something.”
This inspired me to ask the same question of other artists.
All the artists I spoke with, spoke of a similar experience.
Remarkable, isn’t it?
That speaks to a positive evolution, an unseen interconnection.
It speaks to a oneness
It speaks to the notion that we’re a piece of a single organism that we call the universe, which is in a state of perpetual flourishing expansion.
Isn’t flourishing the natural state of things?
Moss, mushrooms, and beatles on a rotten log
Soil rich with varied decompositions.
A revitalized life after a bout with cancer
Flourishing doesn’t always come in the form of rainbows.
When you look out into the stars, what is it that you see? Order or chaos?
Two galaxies colliding. A star in supernova.
I see creation and evolution.
The stars, our ancestors
Our core essence forever the same.
A cosmic dance in perfect balance.
You’re a piece of that.
The artists state that their inspiration and executions are guided by something they feel outside of themselves. This points to a central intelligence, an intelligence that thrives on a symbiotic balance perpetually opening up and evolving into richer and richer levels of beauty.
Physical states that are interwoven and interdependent on other neighboring physical states.
I’m not sure the intelligence and consciousness we experience as ours lie solely within our minds and bodies.
Intelligence seems to surround us, we seem to be awash in flourishing intelligent consciousness.
Artists are the easiest way to point this out.
We all have access to this.
The trick is to feel it, listen to it, and act on it.
We’re all awash in this. The road block is getting over yourself.
Getting over your wants and needs.
The idea seems best represented by the Hindu god with all the arms reaching out. Each arm, an alternate and symbiotic aspect of reality stemming from a single source.
A source in a perpetual state of bloom.

11 Jun 2016

Enjoy this blessed day…
I feel so full.
Yet the imagery, of a ten year old boy sitting on the beach dying from ebola sits with me. Panting; hardly able to breath, he’s sitting alone. People too afraid to touch him.
I’m with that.
It’s become a piece of me.
A part of this moment.
In this same moment my orchid is blooming for the first time in two years. Vibrant purples and pretty pinks unfolding into incomprehensibly delicate intricacies.
That little boy… long since dead.
The suffering that is happening at this very moment is happening and real.
On the shores of the Caribbean, the blue frothy waves roll in with their enchanting rhythm. Soothing the ears of those that stand near.
There are children suffering at the hands of malevolent men. Horrors too great to comprehend.
Is this too much? Hold on, it’s much more complex…
Confounding contradiction.
Pulsing polarities.
Apathies and empathies.
The sun is setting over the Arabian Sea at this very moment. The richest reds penetrating the souls of young lovers immersed in their moment. Dreaming of glorious futures filled with their beloved traditions and loved ones.
There are people mourning the premature loss of a loved one. At the same moment, as a result of the very same event, others are reawakened by the news of a matched organ allowing a future they were losing sight of.
I’ve just finished a latte. The rich creamy shot pulled to perfection. The locally sourced ice cold milk stretched to a silky, shiny, creamy texture. The simple syrup flecked plentifully with dark vanilla bean. All of this is poured together with the delicacy and perfection of a seasoned french chef.
I lost my sisters years ago.
Two, two ton masses mercilessly crashing together over a thin sheet of black ice. Michelle killed instantly, Renee dead a day later. A friend I meet years later, the first person on the scene. Without realizing the connection, he describes to me, in grizzly detail, the images that stain his psyche.
The raw face of death.
Death of hope, death of a dream, death of perceived potentials.
This friend and I made a ritual of living life to its fullest potential, riding in the rain. A declaration never declared. He understood, he’d met the grim reaper years before and slipped from his grasp.
Nothing needed to be said.
He’d lost the use of his arm.
His nerves permanently damaged, forced to set down his guitar and sell his motorcycle.
He knew how to live, he knows how to live.
Reinvented, one of the fastest master skiers in the state.
A passion for riding a bicycle in the woods whenever he could.
Fate being what fate is, his legs would meet the same fate his arm met twenty years earlier. The result of a human flying through the air with no wings. Crashing onto the icy earth with the force of an enormous falling tree. His light indomitable, refusing to be extinguished. Another loss, his bike and skis put away, vestiges of the past.
Today with the use of fantastic technology and an unprecedented raw grit and determination he walks, slides down snowy slopes, and rolls over the rolling landscape with pedals under his feet.
Again, reinvented.
You will not beat him, he is unbeatable.
I used to be at war with life, taunting and teasing the reaper. Unsettled, looking for something outside of myself to satisfy my hunger. Discovering myself, a self not defined by flesh, opened me to the stunning perfection of the place I stood that moment.
What was it like to be that little boy sitting on the beach alone? What did he understand?
This is what I know…
I’m that little boy.
I’m his pain and his fear,
I’m his confusion,
I’m filled with his essence.
An indomitable force that propels me to fantastic levels of joy.
You will not beat us, we are unbeatable!
Enjoy this blessed day.

18 May 2016

It’s a beautiful Minnesota day today. They seem rare this time of year. The sun is shining, the sky is blue, and people are smiling. It’s an easy day.
My barista asked me, “What’s good?” When I stopped and paused she said, “It’s a philosophical question…” I was relatively quick to then say, “It’s a beautiful day.” But I quickly adjusted my statement, “I love crisp cold days, days when I can see my breath.” An hour later, I had a similar conversation with my client and offered a similar adjustment. “Once I’m wet, one of my favorite things to do is walk in the rain.” My client’s eyes perked up and she responded, “When I was young, that was one of my favorite things as well.”
What is that?
When the temp is tepid, the wind is light, the sun is shining but not too bright. Life is easy but somehow… I loose sight.
When the rain is falling, the wind is howling, and the temp is plummeting it’s all so stunningly clear. I know I’m alive. Resistance brings clarity.
Resistance brings clarity. Hmm…
What is that?
For year’s my friend and I would meet every Tuesday night to ride our bikes. It was always dark. That was a given. Sometimes it would rain or sleet. The amazing thing is, he would always show up. I guess it’s equally amazing that I would show up too. The look of an apprehensive defeat in both of our eyes, somehow welcome.
It was always hard to step outside. Knowing that first uncomfortable drip of water would soon find its way down the small of my back and the wet would soon seep into my shoes. Somehow, surprised, I would always recoil. Onward, we would pedal into the night. Once wet, our heads were giddily held high. My bright light reflecting off of the falling rain and mist pouring from my friend’s jersey. We were unstoppable. Somehow, feeling like the luckiest guys in the world. Like we were getting away with something. These were always the best rides. We would say, “if our fare weather friends only knew.”
What is this?
I remember so clearly the night I walked with my friend around the lake. That night was unique. It wasn’t quite raining but a bit more than a mist. I was beaming, transmitting, transcendent… The rain fell around me and I never got wet. We had almost nothing to say and yet, I remember that walk like it was yesterday.
What is this?
I’ve frozen my face to the point I had ice forming and dripping from my bare cheek. I’ve ridden my bike with gloves that were too thin in temperatures that were too cold. I’ve hiked for hours in the alps, walked the pitchy path to Machu Picchu, and hiked the Scottish highlands in the soaking rain. I remember them all like it’s happening this moment.
So sweet and strangely unique…
I wonder if I’ll remember today?
This beautiful, sun shiny day.

1 May 2016

So much of our life we are looking for answers, which there are very few if any that can be known. We are in a world of perceived polarities and differences. We are told that our neighbors are different, that they are threatening and menacing. Political polarities, religious polarities, and ideological polarities, the gamut is thorough and complete. We’re told to be scared, to not trust, to believe evil is rampant. We are told that our god is better than their god. We are told their politics are taking our rights and freedoms away. We are told ours is better then theirs. It’s implied that if you only had this or that you would be complete. We all desire to be different yet desperately want to be the same. We feel alone and misunderstood and desperately search for others like us to support our identities. We stand fearful without answers to life’s questions and subscribe to faith, faith in good, faith in god, faith in an after life, faith in answers to life’s hardships. We pray to god asking, pleading, for strength and wisdom. We recite mantras to support our deepest desires and hopes; we meditate to try to remove the emotional clutter and to secure the moment. We look to others, holy people, wise people, and leaders for guidance when times are difficult and praise them when life is good and question them when it is not. We look for patterns and synchronicities that support our structures and search for signs suggesting our path to be true. We explore new ideologies and theologies in an attempt to find relief from what pains us, and when we do, we profess it as the way. We believe our ideology to be special and different and the answer to the problems we see, but somehow the ideology is still misunderstood by others. Why?

What’s this all about?

Fear.

Fear controls and repels, fear divides and represses.

There is one answer within this world of perceived injustices.

Love.

There is nothing to be done politically; there is no religion or institution that will bring us together. Ideology is delusionality. The answer is to love the person next to you. The answer is to hold the door open. The answer is to let someone else go first. The answer is selfless action. The answer is to give because it feels good. The answer is to tell people they are beautiful. The answer is to give hugs. The answer is to look into people’s eyes and listen with your heart. The answer is to shine from within.

How do we fix a seemingly broken world? Love unconditionally, completely, and thoroughly. Don’t believe for a moment that the person that sits across the table or on the other side of the world from you has any hopes different than yours. We all desire peace. We all desire respect. We all desire a better world for our children.

This thing we desire, happens from the bottom up. It happens at the soul level. Our leaders cannot deliver this. Our religious institutions cannot deliver this. This happens one person at a time, one moment at a time. It happens with sincere acts of selfless love, which are undeniably exquisite and contagious.

Your neighbor and fellow man want to be loved, more desperately than you may possibly imagine. Be that love, be that peace, be that beacon of light. Lead through love. Simple unselfish love…

Tim Trudeau 