Existing in this world is a fight. The fight is managing the pressures of finding meaning while maintaining some sense of hope and joy, amidst what is often a depressing and oppressive cultural narrative. It is also a choice for how we will show up and be a part of it. We are human beings only here for a short time, no matter how long the planet exists, we are only a blip in existence comparatively. This fight is about what type of human will we choose to be? There is no instruction manual or guidebook that we are given to tell us who or what to be. Being human is an on the job trial and error experience. Trying to get it right is a fight of a lifetime. Sometimes it feels like we are fighting against unreasonable odds where getting it right is nearly impossible. This seems especially true in the past few years, but I imagine that historically, humans who care, have always thought being human was especially challenging in their time.
There is a lot in the world today to be sad about, confused about, left frustrated and feeling hopeless about. Individually there are people who seem to be toxic and abusive by nature, just lashing out at the world destroying whatever and whomever is in their path. There is relationship toxicity where people just can’t get along because one or both people are focused on what they are getting from the other person rather than how to give and receive to find balance. There is medical toxicity and abuse where doctors and patients are no longer allowed to determine what care is needed, but that care is instead chosen by pharmaceutical and insurance companies. There is political toxicity and abuse where the goal is power and destruction of anyone who disagrees with them. There is spiritual toxicity and abuse where the goal is to eliminate anyone and any belief that disagrees with them. There is a toxic social culture where the goal is power, money, and material things. There is a toxic planet, where the natural plants, animals, and water are all becoming either extinct or so full of poison that it’s no longer safe to eat, breath, or drink anything, and it feels like everything is dying faster than we could possibly try to save it. These are not exaggerations or a doomsday single focused assessment. These are real things, people, ways of being and situations that truly exist, and that isn’t even all of the examples of these kinds of things that exist. It’s just the top set of them.
This situation often leaves me feeling hopeless and defeated like I am simply playing violin on the Titanic, at best. At worst, I am Leo hanging on to a pseudo life raft knowing that I will die, and most everyone else is also going to die too. Except this isn’t a movie death. It is a real death. Knowing that this terrible, toxic world exists can make most things in life seem pointless, meaningless and as though, nothing matters, so why try? Why try to live longer in a dying world? Why try to be healthy when there isn’t even a clear path to healthy options? How can we even tell what is “good” for us when the “experts” are paid to sell things rather than tell the truth about what is and isn’t “good”. Why try to make a difference, when the difference that can be made is so small compared to the shit show that is this planet? Why try anything at all, when it is all going to end up in the dumpster fire we live in?
I get that is the most defeatist attitude one can possibly have. I get that the “positive thinking” crowd would say, “Look on the bright side, don’t focus on the negativity around you, be a positive influence in the world, and don’t latch onto limiting beliefs.” Though I agree to a certain degree, I also wonder why bother? Can anything I personally do make any difference in the global demise? When I consider my level of personal power, my station and position in life, the answer is, “Nope, there is nothing I can do to change the course of this inevitable destruction.” This makes me more sad than I can even express in words. There is nothing I can do to change anything on a larger scale than my own small portion of the world. Anything I can do to improve my small part of this huge world will, on the whole, change nothing about the direction of the planet and larger cultural demise of everything. There is so much selfishness and greed, and lack of self-awareness, lack of care and willingness to even try to do anything, that one person doing anything, is not even like dropping a pebble in one of the great lakes. It is like dropping a tiny grain of sand in the ocean. If there is any ripple at all, it goes nowhere, and touches very little in the overall scheme of things.
Given this is how I feel, and in truth, anyone who sees anything at all in the world might also feel similarly when they read or watch the news, or see anything about what is happening in the world on the internet, what should we do? How should we choose to live?
Within my tiny sphere of humans that I know, people are generally trying to be good people. I work in a human service field, and I am close to people who believe in being responsible to each other and to the earth. Though we may not agree on the details of what that means, most of the people I interact with are trying. I have tried to limit the people who get to be close to me to those who are trying to be kind and do good things in the world. Still all around me I can see those wonderful people crashing up against a world that is dying, other humans that only want to destroy the world to gain power over it, and nothing anyone can do will stop it. It is as though the apocalypse is upon us, and all we can do is wait for it to be over and see who survives. So I again ask myself, what should I be doing? What should any of us be doing?
If I stop paying attention to the destructive forces in the world, if I stop reading/watching news about politics, medicine, social and cultural declines, would I feel better? If I stop staying informed about the destruction of the world, does that mean I am in denial about what is happening? Is being in denial about all this a bad thing? There is the group of people on the planet who believe that we can manifest a different future by focusing on the positive energy we can create and blocking out the negative. When I first encountered spiritual teachers who were not from the Christian view point, they spoke of energy of humans and empathic and psychic abilities. One of the first things they taught me was that as an empath, I am sensitive to the energies of other humans and of nature, that I can feel what others feel, see what others see, and connect to the energy of the planet. This is why with all that is happening, I feel so hopeless and defeated, because that is a general feeling of the humans and nature around me all of the time. So, these teachers first wanted to teach me how to block that energy from affecting me.
The idea was that I would create a positive energy field around me that would serve as a wall to keep out the negativity that was surrounding me. It would block the stuff that was causing me to feel sadness and hopelessness. This was not a difficult task for me, I quickly realized. In truth, I learned to do that when I was in elementary school. I spent most of my life until my early to mid-thirties in a completely detached state of being, feeling very little, connecting to very little, and so walled off from reality that I didn’t know what was going on in, not only the greater world, but within my own inner world. I was a stranger to myself, my planet, and everything I came in contact with. I was really good at blocking out the dangerous energy of the world. I did not need teachers to show me that skill.
Here is the thing though. Being in that state of detachment was also not the answer. I actually worked really hard to get out of that numb state because when I walled off sadness, I also walled off joy. When I walled off others’ negativity, I also walled off what they bring that is positive and healing. You cannot accept or feel love if you are in a constant state of keeping out harm and hate. Walling off or blocking negativity is possible. I did it for years. There are many teachers out there who can show you how to do it. I am not a fan, nor do I think that is the answer to my situational depression either. I need the joy. I need the positivity. I need the healing energy of love. If I wall off and block out the opposite of those, I also block out them. Walls keep things out, universally, not selectively. If you want to let in love and joy, they naturally come with sadness and suffering. That is the yin and yang of life. There is no light without dark, and no dark without light. There is either nothing, or everything. You can’t have just one or the other. You always get both.
What is the answer? What is the trick for me then? Initially when I came out of my immensely detached state, I spent a lot of time in self-protection mode. Once I started feeling things, I needed to find safe spaces where the other people around me weren’t attacking me and denying me as a person. I moved halfway across the country to get away from many of those people, which was awesome. Though I also took one of them with me, which didn’t work out so great, and though, it took me many years, I did eventually find myself. I had been lost to myself for most of my life. I had no idea what I believed, what I felt, who I was. Basically from 1998 to 2004 I was simply feeling, whirling, and discovering again who I was. In 2004, I took my first step into myself and started to fully embrace the human that I was born to be. Since then, I have just been practicing being the best person I can possibly be and continuing to figure out what type of people I need and want around me to support my growth and practice of humanity. I do not feel good about the state of the world. I do not feel good about my past, who I was sometimes or how others treated me. I do not have a hopeful feeling about where we are all going to end up as a race of humans on a dying planet. Yet, I feel better about being in my own skin than I have ever felt in my life. I am surrounded by loving and genuine people who support me and care for me in ways I have never felt before. I can be at peace every day for parts of the day, even if it is not all of the day.
In this, I start to find my answer to what I should be doing. It is to embrace it all. All of the sadness and destruction is real and a very large part of what we are all simply living within. AND All of the love and joy, which is the other large part of what we are all surrounded by and living within. We are not all just dying sacks of flesh with no purpose. We are human beings, full of potential and love. It is within every person to show this love and potential. We are not going to survive the destruction of the planet. NONE of us will, nothing will survive. The cycle of life is that everything eventually will die. That is how nature works. It is the inevitable law of the natural world. The Titanic is going down and there will be no survivors.
AND, it’s not over yet. There is lots of time left. Even if that time is only 1 hour, 1 year, 30 years or 100 decades. There is lots of time left. What should we do with that time? What should I do with that time? Do I need to know all that I can know about the evils that are destroying the world? I do not believe that I do. Do I need to know enough to know what is happening so that I can do my part to not participate in it as much as I can possibly avoid participating in it? Yes, this is true. I need to know enough to shop intelligently and as sustainably as I can. I need to know enough to vote for the best possible leaders I can find. I need to know enough to do my best to guide as many people as I can to be responsible humans, who love and care for each other and the planet. I need to know enough to take the best care of myself that I can so that I can be here as long as I can to be the person who teaches, loves and cares for others and the planet.
Will me doing those things change the course of destruction? Probably not. If over half of the planet was doing that, would it change the path of destruction? Also, probably not. It is probably too late to stop the inevitability of it all no matter what one person or one group does. Mostly because no one seems to be able to agree on what should be done. Is that a reason to not try though? Is that a reason to wallow in the sadness and suffering of the planet, and not try to be something different, something more than the embodiment of the dying planet? I don’t know about anyone else. I just know for myself. If I spend too much time worrying and planning for the end of my life, for the end of the planet, for the end of all love and joy, I feel that I am contributing more to the speed at which all of that is happening than I am trying to stall it. If I focus on what I can do, what I can be, that is not destructive, not evil, not suffering, while that might not slow the end of the world, it might just make the rest of my time here less awful. It might make the time of the people around me a little less awful too. If I embody love and compassion and focus on what is good and positive, how does that impact others? Maybe it changes nothing on a grand scale. Yet, though almost everyone died on the Titanic, the playing of the band made that end much more enjoyable than if there was nothing of beauty to behold as everything was ending.
How can we be something of beauty for the world around us to behold to make the end of this journey something less awful, something more wonderful, something worth spending our time doing? It is likely all going down in a marvelous dumpster fire of a shit show, and still, what can I do to make that the most beautiful, loving, caring experience for myself and anyone who cares to be near me? This is my goal. I can’t ignore the dumpster fire. It exists. I need to pay attention to it to avoid as much of the heat as I can, and still. . . I can also, get out the s’mores for anyone who cares to enjoy the heat. I can throw some fun magazines on it with colorful ink that make the fire prettier. I can wet the ground around it as much as possible to slow down the spread of it. This isn’t going to stop it, but in the end, there was nothing anyone could do to stop it. It is the destiny. It is the inevitability. It is the purpose and cycle that was designed for us before the first person ever stepped out of the ooze to be human. Nothing lasts forever, and all things have their beginning and their end. We might as well make the best of the ride to then end. What other choice do we have? We can make it worse, we can be paralyzed by the inevitability of it, or we can embrace it, enjoy the parts that are wonderful and amazing, and just love the shit out of everyone and everything we can on our way out. That last one is what I am going to try to focus on. I have tried the other two ways, and they don’t seem to be what works best for me.
You get to choose your own path. You can choose one of those three, or you can choose something completely different! That is the most wonderful thing about being human. We all get to choose our own path. I have chosen for me. What will it be for you?
Namaste-