Conversations of a Hurting World.
{Photo via thehindu.com}
Inside you, there is a conversation longing to be voiced.
There is a longing to be one with another earthling somewhere in another part of the world. You can feel it in your bones. Religions have tried to direct it to the One above, but now we know it’s important that we all direct it to one another.
Another child in Syria dying of hunger,
another woman in India burned alive,
another nation ravaged by war,
another few hundreds species gone extinct,
another few thousands of bees dead,
another few islands wiped out by floods,
another criminal gone free for being privileged…
… it goes on.
Inside you, there is a switch, there is a pivot, there is a doorway to make this all stop. But you can’t do it alone. You need to be in conversation in this hurting world, in this hurtful world.
Today, the United States is in 74 wars that it would care to admit. And in not a few places, governments are protecting business interests, while its citizens are screaming, “Exclusion!” Karl Marx was wrong about economic alienation as the source of evils; in fact, it’s any alienation.
Political alienation is just as insidious as the tactics of the school bullies in our youth.
On the other side, many persons all over the world are thinking of their fortunate comforts as their success. Often we don’t know how successful we are at failure. We may not be hungry, sick, homeless, or dying.
We could be the patriarch in a patriarchy; the white person on top of an exploitative capitalist organization; the most influential voice in Rome; the most well-loved democratically elected leader of the Free World. We can only be judged in how small a piece of the world our reality can be held.
Outside the doors, billions suffer to enable that delusion of success. Now think again, in what small kingdom are you king?
The pursuit of wisdom has not been seen as a virtue for ages. For centuries, we have been programmed not to trust each other or collaborate.
Talk is action.
How we design our talks, defines our actions. Today, our conversations are primitive, flawed for being undirected, unfocused, unowned, unexplored. We have been told that there are sacred texts and sacred cows, or anyone with the microphone. There is much to learn about conversing.
If we want to feel safe, let’s not adopt a friend alone, but into a community. No, trust your instincts. No, the crowd does not ever fall mindlessly off a cliff. Especially if you welcome dissent and give the outlier a voice.
Compassion in action needs wisdom. Conversations flow freely when we seek equal openness, expecting that the end of meetings will always be transformation.
Khalil Gibran said, “Say not, ‘I have found the truth,’ but rather, ‘I have found a truth.’ Say not, ‘ I have found the path of the soul.’ Say rather, ‘I have met the soul walking upon my path.’ For the soul walks upon all paths. The soul walks not upon a line, neither does it grow like a reed. The soul unfolds itself, like a lotus of countless petals.”
“What shames us, what we most fear to tell, does not set us apart from others; it binds us together if only we can take the risk to speak it.” ~ Starhawk, neopagan author
Empiricism has limits. Logic itself cannot stand to define everything. It is too linear, and life is cyclical, if not circular. The cause influences the effect, but also vice versa. Logic can make uniform laws but not uniform happiness.
Vincent Van Gogh said, “When I have a terrible need of — shall I say the word — religion, then I go out and paint the stars.”
Happiness is from subjectivity of experience, but cannot stand without service to community.
Everywhere people lack clarity and discernment because the usual voice of power and dogma has failed them, they look to wisdom from above and within finding nothing. A mission begs to be taken on, one that enables people to collaborate and learn from each other.
You have not been taught to seek wisdom from equals. You have been taught to wonder at the esoteric or elite or seek the divine above or within. You have been told that there are sacred texts and people.
What special skill or esoteric knowledge can the overpaid 1% have to deserve their privilege that the rest cannot already have if they were so empowered? You have not used the freedom of assembly too well by conversing only with the center of the circle.
You have not owned your conversations, but have sat still in your seats listening to someone steer it where your questions don’t itch to be answered. You have congregated in futility, where those who own the microphone do not expect to be changed.
You have wasted your time talking to people who think they know it all.
Conversation is the most underutilized tool of change. The movers and the shakers lose their relevance when after gaining power they end conversations.
You need to have conversations now. Make them count.
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Tet Gallardo
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