Light the Fear

The Power of Touch

As independent sentient beings, we like to think we are all that and a bag of chips.  One human is the basic unit of intelligent life, and most of our mental and physical health systems are based on this assumption.

But what if that's not true?  What if between humans, communicated through touch and other forms of human communication, their is a higher unit of life?

Aren't we denying the power of touch? Aren't we isolating ourselves, and creating a culture of fear around touch with the next generation?

What if we need touch?  What if the power of touch is much like the spark of life? Igniting and combining us into something more than the sum of our observable parts?

We recognize marriages, hopefully of any stripe or gender combination, as unions between two people who sometimes also create or adopt children to create a family, the next level of social organism we often see empowered and supported.

Yet beyond "the family," what kind of social organism's are left in modern America?  The church or community may exist, but not in the same contexts or number of lives as before.

By letting the word "family" also come to mean one person, alone and isolated, untouched and untouching, haven't we denied something very basic in our nature?

We need to touch, to know our power. We need to be touched, to know the power of other.

And in between, I think we are lurching towards something spectacularly more.

I Was There

I was there before the collapse, before the loss of chance, before the shackling of love to the limits of growth.  I grew up in a world of sunshine laced days, racing down the block to the cool metal poll, chalk on the sidewalk and balmy rains every afternoon.  Winning some and losing some, yet knowing the game was fair, the sun my friend.

I was there before the hate and the vitriol and the diatribe tribes propaganda propagated their profit mantra, before the fundamentalists peeled off and ex-communicated science, before we each were so willing to sacrifice the other in our own personal visage of truth, when truth meant something shared, something given and something uncertain accepted.

I was there before the abuse and the sexualization of honor, before anyone snorted meth off a toaster, before reason was overtook by blind faith and fear raped love then married her to raise their incestuous child on a reality show conceived in the test tank of a tube mogul's island party house.  I remember silence and the soft skin of lizards caught dashing between blades of solid green, a mirage fading with interconnectedness and digital everywhere and everything bleeding us into nothing.

I was there before tears stained my cheeks and hope wracked her bones on the shoals of a muse unable to see the tragedy of her song, compelled to sing yet ever hopeful to the future as the blind can never see the light yet bathe in the photons none the same.  We were opportunity and the chance was ours, slipping like a free market failure to find us the right solution in time to make different the trends that reveal unreal feelings failing to fulfill our falling call to destiny.

If Only to Be Free

What makes you forward something to your friends and family when you read it online?  What is that "thing" about some things that motivate you to share, that move you to move others?

Popular Internet forwards come in all shapes and sizes from funny to serious, cruel to inspirational, crude to insightful, and we all love some and hate others.

If only we could be free of the people and things we don't like, then maybe we might feel better about ourselves?  Maybe we focus on what we dislike in others in the ways it is reflected from our own denial or struggle with what we do not like about ourselves?

What if in actuality you loved others, not because of who they are, but because it was the right thing to do? Not just your family and community either, but especially with strangers.

What if we didn't feel so afraid of strangers? if we didn't feel like we needed to be so afraid? if others were not so cruel?  What if our world celebrated diversity and taught our kids not first to reflexively close up defensive, but to give openness as acceptance?

I know people freak out about protecting kids, but I'm just saying our world would be very different if we respected our energetic existences together and if in our pubic spaces, the first thing we asked and expected out of everyone was positive can-do attitude, as a civic duty, as a valued social contribution, as the basis of positive community space.

Of course, many people would not be able to do this some or all of the time.  We are emotional creatures and meant to be.  I'm the last person who wants to take emotional variance out of our culture, but I want us to treat each other with more respect, so that we too can experience more respect.

The competitive models of our economy limit us so drastically in our latent collective potential of attitude.  I dream of a world where we foster customs and practices in HOW you think to protect our people, advance the greatest good and make it okay for everyone to lead a rich personal emotional path of experience.

Right now, there are pitfalls on every side that can destroy your life, and your fellow man is the first to run for the door when you get into trouble.  Is this the best we can do?

Isn't it really about "how we treat the weakest amongst us?"

Not in the courts or community outreach programs, but how do we each individually do it in our heads.  Do we judge them, shun them, make fun of them.  Do we make ourselves feel better by ridiculing their weaknesses or luck?  Why does that judgment feel so warm to us, yet go away so fast?

Instead, what if we extended energetic compassion when possible and when not, at least some form of neutrality.  How much does the negative observation and exacerbate everything, including our own negative results?  Why do we want that?

If you are feeling empty inside, the emotion is an indicator that you are thinking or doing something that's not good for you.  If you are consistently making fun of anyone, you are hiding from one of those empty feelings and hurting another when it is really about you.

If you can see this now, you can change.  You will feel better if you do.

What we think about our "self" is the real source for all of our negative emotions, no matter who we feel justified in blaming. Something bad may have happened in our life.  You are disappointed or afraid of your challenges, but it's not them that sets you over into feeling wholly bad.

It is giving up on yourself, giving in to the worst fears or predictions from your past and investing in that fear or doubt. Yet the coolest thing about thinking is that you can change what you think any time.

We live in a free market, of resources, of wealth accumulation, of jobs and health care, but also of relationships and emotional support, all wired into a complex nexus of dependencies to keep you afloat and fed, if not happy and healthy.  But only if you keep them all in balance, only if you enjoy competing with others, only if you play the game.  Is love really a commodity?

Through it all, our emotions are the tracks for the rollercoaster of our life.  Whether you like the ride your on, or you hate it, you are thinking the tracks into existence.  Collectively, what we think creates the tracks to the Great Roller-Coaster-in-the-Sky. 

Now that we know that, will we save it from the impending crash?  We certainly can, but will we?

Can you hope?  even for a stranger?

Here's an amazing inspirational example of the choice we each have every day.