Month: February 2022

Over the last few days I’ve been watching the slow motion unrolling of the Russian troops as they begin to pierce, carve apart and penetrate into the Ukraine. There’s a deep sadness from watching this. This giant country run by a tiny paranoid man, that has more land than any other country on the planet. Yet it wants to take a small parcel of earth and culture away from a small group of people who have democratically chose to govern themselves.

I’m also troubled by ways that TV displays war in real time. We get the personal side. We get the leadership side. We get the economic side. We get all the different perspectives woven into this weird reality TV show format. The corporate media has created a hybridizing of entertainment and news. This keeps us gripped on world affairs in a voyeuristic manner. It’s just enough to engage and far enough away to feel safe.

Even with it’s distasteful way of presenting war into our living rooms and onto our devices. I sense a welling up in humanity. We are tired of war. Many of us have lived several decades with war as the back drop and for the reality of their lives. For some their entire all they have only known is a world that has been at war. War for resources, water and oil. Wars for land and religious dominance. War to cover up corruption. War to distract from economic truths. We have watched our scientists, military complexes, and workforces create and build more and more things to mutilate human bodies and destroy this planet.

If anything these wars have created an economic insulation for the uber rich. They dictate how they want to play this bizarre chess game with innocent lives and broker resources without consequence. They see no fault in destroying the earth for the resources to fight war. They see no reason to not destroy the art, the culture and the diversity of this planet for war. In their capitalistic drive for more power they will destroy this Earth and everything on it if they think it will make them more money.

Yet somehow this invasion of Ukraine feels like it’s awakening of something inside of humanity. It’s awakening that part of us that’s sick and tired of losing family members to the machine of war, watching war destroy our economic stability, driving people from one place to another in search of home and safety. Starving people. Deciding who is worthy and who is not. The only people who gain from war are those who profit. The rest of us are the collateral damage of greed and power. Over decades the corrupt and powerful have banked that the collective destruction of our humanity would keep us down. That our need just to survive day-to-day will keep us from protesting. That the fear of speaking up or acting in a way to defend our humanity would keep us from noticing the god-awful situations we are expected to thrive in. They had banked that they had convinced us that the crumbs they gave us we were the only things we were worthy of. They defined our humanity was worth through the lens of Capitalism. Our society is degraded and then fed the addictive pleasures of dreams and false truths. Taught ideologies that divided us and kept us a part because the enemy was our neighbor…. The enemy had a different color of skin… The enemy was educated…. The be enemy practiced in a different religion, The enemy wanted to steal your little plot of something and give it to somebody else… We were handed lack and fear and told it was abundance. We were told strength is in the individual and the collective could not be trusted. And the oligarchs got richer the rest of us worked harder for less and we sent our children to war.

But I believe we are in the entropy of war. War is no longer stabilizing. War is not peacekeeping. There’s no longer a truly justifiable reason for the resources of this planet to be invested in weapons of its destruction, the massacre of Humanity and the drivetsity of this planet.

We are deserving of the wealth, beauty, art and cultural and bio- diversity that is the true treasure of this planet. We have the technology and resources to evolve away from fossil fuels and to build a future that is economically fair, and culturally diverse, and protective of this planet.

We don’t need any more wars. We need each other We need our Humanity.

Valentine’s Day is such a strange event. Since I grew up it has changed from the little paper cards we gave out in elementary school to long love letters, flowers, investments in dinners, gifts, grand gestures of love and affection I know the technological pixelated gifs and images we send on social media and text messages. Commercialized more and more as I got older. Disenfranchising so many because it became something you had to invest in. You were expected to do. Like a church obligation. A socialized love initiation. A kind of weird social tribal event to show that you truly loved someone by investing in pink and red hearts ,cupids and seasonal chocolate, romantic encounters.

I cannot say my life has been filled with these sort of romantic displays and encounters with other human beings. I tend to be pretty disinterested in the commercialization of most of the holidays that I grew up with. I feel if you love somebody you show that everyday in little and big ways. In ways that are genuine and real that come from the heart. That show your appreciation and your acceptance of who they are as they are in your life. Upon reflection this doesn’t always generate longevity in relationships. But it keeps it real. And I don’t contribute to more pink plastic and cheap red velvet hearts and the other confections of this day.

All these things aside I would like to tell a story…. A story that I think captures how I feel about the world. That naive Big Love kind of way. I think it also has defined how I am in the world more so than I really thought of until the last few years.

When I was in kindergarten my teacher Ms Dolan had us all get her crayons out to do a project. And the project was we were to draw a picture of our family. I got excited cuz I love to draw I love to get crayons out I love to play on that weird sort of yellowy paper we got when we were in kindergarten. I remember the crayons were primary colors they were flat on one side so they wouldn’t roll off our desks. And they had to smell that I found pleasing. So I got my green, blue and my brown crayons out. I drew a big circle and then I began to draw the oceans and the landmasses and I try to do the right amounts of brown and green and blue to make a beautiful globe…. a beautiful Earth. Because in my small 6 year old child mind everything was my family. I love talking to the trees I love listening to the ocean I loved all the creatures great and small. The ants in the bugs and the worms and my kitties and dogs and all sorts of flora and fauna. And from all my trips to the local library. All the books I was able to take out and explore things, place and people far and wide. The large collection of National geographic magazines my mom had piled up around the house. I just thought all people were beautiful and were part of my family. In my young mind I saw no separation. We were all in this together it was an incredibly magical experience and there I was in it with everybody else.

And with all of this swirling around in my little happy heart and coming out through my hands into this magical drawing of the globe I was drawing my family. When time was up Ms Dolan got us all to stand around in a circle with our drawings. She went around asking each of us about who we drew and asked us to tell us about their family.

When she got to me I started to say it’s the globe. It’s the world… She cut me off…. She said I didn’t listen and I didn’t do the assignment. I felt myself turn red with embarrassment. I felt humiliated. She wouldn’teven let me explain. Then I got angry. She told me to go back and draw my family. I could feel the tears welling up inside of me. I could feel the anger and rage inside of me. a I got a black crayon and I drew my family as stick figures and I came back and I told everybody who they were. I was crushed….

Of course when I became an adult and I reflect upon this experience in my meditations and also in therapy I now realize what Ms Dolan was trying to get us to do as an assignment. What I do realize as I have grown older is that I do think in those large terms first. Those inclusive terms. The first time I read about Thich Nhat Hans interbeing I felt that resonate inside my heart because that’s really how I’ve always lived. My life it’s all about interconnection. Seeing those interconnections. Understanding of those interconnections. Mending those interconnections. On this Earth nothing, no one is in a vacuum. Nothing exists by itself and isolated. We have recently created conditions in which we perceive our isolation due to the breakdown of families and communities. The lopsidedness of working conditions and economic inequities. The most current issue being the pandemic and it’s isolation due to trying to keep ourselves and loved ones safe.

So on this day one of the things I’m thinking about is how do we awaken that bigger grander wider love. That love that is as wide as the world that encompasses everybody. That is grounded in the ethics of how we treat human beings and the planet. That builds a sustainable future that radically departs from our destructive behaviors. The recognizes the sacredness of all life on this Earth. It’s fragility, strengths, adaptation and its magic.

So perhaps love isn’t a gesture of paper hearts and plastic tokens. Love is an understanding of this deep profound connection to all things around us.

2 years ago today I was wrapping up the last of my California workshops and seeing clients. It had  been spent seeing a client, saying my goodbyes and then hitting the road.  Heading south down Route 1 along the California coast around 3:00 in the afternoon. I would see whales I would photograph the beautiful ocean in  I tookke my time driving down towards Pismo Beach. Savoring each moment I was able to see that beautiful expanse of the Pacific Ocean knowing somewhere in my gut it would be a long time before I would revisit it again.

There was a whisper of rumors that at that time. Rumors about a respiratory virus that was in China could be up in Oregon but nobody was really sure. I left California with some question marks because some of the people I had stayed with had just gotten over a long respiratory illness of unknown origin and even though they were healthy while I stayed.  I appeared healthy as I left. I know that viruses can in fact be symptomless.

I don’t think anyone really planned for a pandemic or this 2-year Long haul of our lives being disrupted. In fact I think we’ve been quite privileged in how our lives have sort of rolled along good or bad, overwhelmed, misunderstood, traumatized, full of Joy… We’ve had pretty uninterrupted lives. 9/11 put a wrinkle in our lives but we went right back to shopping and living life as life presented it. The election of Trump had traumatized many of us and we were working hard to not be mashed by that crazy and fight what we could. The climate deteriorated more but most people didn’t give it much thought.  The population of those in poverty, below poverty and homeless exploded. Tent cities rose up in city blocks and people complained about it . The people living in tents just tried to survive. It is was bad for optics and business but nobody really thought about the causes of these lives falling or being pushed into these circumstances. For the most part we’re incredibly self-absorbed and just getting what we wanted and getting through the day. 

We spent so much time shoving our grief and our trauma away so that we could just survive the grind of modern life. Navigating the glitches and triumphs of technology. The resistance to aging with all of its potions, yoga, healthy lifestyles and eating.  As well as  the acceptance of aging bodies that need things replaced and illnesses dealt with…. Retirement and investments… That dream house.  Keeping our youth entertained as well as educated.  Constantly pushing them to the top of the pile so that they are the most perfect, the smartest, most intelligent, most able, most capable, most creative to win the life game.  Balancing all of this every day while just keeping our job so that we could pay the bills.  We could move forward into the next day and do the exact same thing over and over.  Having embodied fear to not question anything.  Knowing that if we did question we would be considered negative or not a team player.  We would be putting our whole life at risk families relationships friends business partners etc… Life was complicated and full and for many people.  We weren’t living we were triaging 24 hours for a life we never really attained anything in.

And then a silent virus came and shut everything down.  We were stuck in the deafening silence of our empty shells.  Our beating hearts. All the  broken dreams.  The waste of time, energy and resources we put into a system that expect everything form us yet it belittled to our need for safeguards. Wrapped it in a flag and sold us a handful of magic beans about American exceptionalism. Berating those who couldn’t make it saying they were lazy, unworthy and undesirable.  And they did little to prevent it from crashing down because those who had invested well saw no need to keep it going because there was nothing that they needed from the system anymore.

And as we sit here two years later with a government that is at a standstill do to political posturing.  The very programs that could give us decent jobs, health care, lives that are meaningful, education that actually gived us the resources and the tools to build a better future for our youth…and the country.

The social and economic entropy is the reality of where we are right now. Although it might feel like, it is not necessarily the end.  It doesn’t have to end badly. It doesn’t have to define who we are. This is the time to stop.  Reflect upon what it is we really want as our futures.  The thing about entropy is you can never go backwards.  It never falls back to the way it was.  It’s like when you drop a plate and it shatters in pieces.  You might try to glue it back together but it’s never going to be the same it’s never going to be whole.

And we are never going to build it like it was we are never going to have a world that looked like it did two years ago. We might have shadows or memories. We might have remnants. We might have bits and pieces that are holdovers from that time. None of that will resurrect it back to what it was. What we need to do and is move forward into a vision of what we want not just for individuals but for the collective. No single human being lives in a vacuum. Everything that’s happening on this planet will affect every single one of us whether you are a billionaire and you can go run away to space or you’re living in the squalor of a shanty town. The effects of this catharsis has ramifications for all of us.

It’s time that we actually dealt with the water crisis, the food crisis, resources, housing, education, and the large population of people who will be migrating to livable and habitable places on this planet.  These and many other things that can be grown out of this entropy. As one of the laws of the universe entropy always moves towards order and work so as we move through this we can define that order and that work we can set the direction we can set the vision. This is probably one of the most pivotal and important aspects of our evolution right now on the planet. What we do now will affect if we go towards extinction or our survival into something different.