Dearly beloved…and I’ll end my Prince quote here. I’ve been thinking about life, whatever it is, exactly. What a privilege it is to interact with our environment in these bodies, with these senses, hormones, and sentience.
Whatever it means to be alive is a mystery, which we humans have come up with many ideologies, myths, belief systems, and science to try to explain. I’m one of those humans who think there is something we can’t perceive or comprehend that keeps our illusion of life, time, physics, and all that together. I’m not even sure that all life perceives the same things, not even individuals of the same species.
So, here we all are wandering around perceiving and judging, harboring the illusion that everyone else is living in the same “world” that we are. I contend that we’re wrong about that. I’m not positive that even folks we agree with are perceiving what we think we are.
It’s no wonder, then, that we keep hearing the same things said about members of our fractured culture in opposing “sides.” And they are sincerely baffled about why those “sheep” have “drunk the Kool Aid” and need to “wake up.”
Depending on how your brain chemistry is set up, you might see liberals, conservatives, Marxists, Greens, or Libertarians as making sense and everyone else is an idiot. Or worse. I’m so tired of this shit and how it’s affecting all life on this planet.
It’s making it harder and harder to keep placing one foot in front of the other and appreciate this amazing gift of LIFE, even though I’m going along with the Buddha in positing it’s an illusion.
The big illusion that I, and many of my generation, allowed ourselves to believe was that history was arcing toward peace, equality, and freedom to be and believe however we see fit and that we were all working towards these goals. I was pretty wrong about that!
But nonetheless, life is precious and I want to appreciate the opportunity to live as long as I’m allowed to. In this life I’m going to love deeply, cherish the planet and its inhabitants, and learn as much as I can, even though it may be unpleasant much of the time.
Mostly, I will accept with grace that a good portion of the people I share the world with want me eliminated. Yeah. People in my town who carry cards saying “Spay or Neuter Your Democrat” or post signs in their yard saying they have PTSD: Pretty Tired of Stupid Democrats.
Stuff like that is why I do not intend to engage in tit for tat with these folks. We live in different worlds, and they live in different worlds from many people of similar ideologies.
I’m glad some of our worlds overlap a bit. Not everyone who voted differently from you or practices a different religion is an extremist. So many of us just want to have an enjoyable life. Somehow.
The Hermits' Rest 