Two ways of proceeding, two attitudes, two paths...
I am not saying we should just accept injustice. We ought to speak up when we witness injustice, in person and even if we simply know about it. In this world of the twenty four hour news cycle, that means all the time. And if fighting in the political arena invigorates you, do it!
“So keep fighting for freedom and justice, beloveds, but don't forget to have fun doin' it. Be outrageous... rejoice in all the oddities that freedom can produce. And when you get through celebrating the sheer joy of a good fight, be sure to tell those who come after how much fun it was!”
― Molly Ivins
But it is tough going, except for the talented few, to work for freedom and justice by contending. Often the process is exhausting for everyone and only strengthens the grip of each side on their own point of view. Still, sometimes the only way to resist is to fight, and I, for one, am grateful to those who have gone before and fought for my freedom.
I am grateful that I have the freedom and leisure to think and write about this. Sometimes we get so angry, even for a righteous cause and on behalf of others, that we forget about the very positive things we do have going for us.
More often, naturally, we get the most upset about slights to ourselves by others. It becomes a distressing syndrome. We walk around ruminating on points of unfairness. We are all too aware of it because we pour our precious divine gift of attention into our angry thoughts. Then we transfer our smoldering resentments to the surrounding world and walk around like ticking time bombs, waiting for events to confirm our negative expectations.
This line of thinking leads to making political presumptions based on fear or scarcity, which cause us, en mass, to make bad decisions.
But this erroneous cascade has an antidote. Naturally we have evolved to avoid danger so we exaggerate the importance of the negative aspect of things. So we have to seek the good and pay our precious attention to it.
Gratitude works. This Great Attitude fills us with a feeling of well being and empowers us to do something about problems. If we remember that the great and small things we enjoy daily are a gift, we get a bounce. An urge to share, to give back, to keep it going, to pass it on. It connects us.
Let us begin to count our blessings. Recent books point out that in many ways, more people are doing better in measurable ways than ever before. Just to use one example, while the technologies that create wealth by doing more with less that have been steadily raising the standard of living globally in recent times, even though the money system efficiently distributes most of the money to the elite, most people are doing better on the current crumbs than the previous crumbs dropped by the greedy men.
There is a true wealth in the ability to communicate, to access the knowledge of all the other people, and this is more or less freely shared now on the web. This free wealth is a true game changer. The sharing of our knowledge freely is leading to more tangible sharing as well. Sharing is now a thing.
People are routing around obstacles by helping one another remotely, often bringing very close up results. We are swimming in this bonanza right now like tadpoles, getting our bearings in the new pond full of all of us. Most of it is, like in the precyber age, wasted flailings about, undirected, silly, and even all the bad things are starting to figure out ways to cause trouble there too, but still: we are way underestimating how great of a gift it is to be connected at the speed of light.
We seem to take it for granted that all the wisdom of the ages is at our fingertips.
We shrug off the security of traveling with the power to summon help in an instant. We have the magical power of smart maps to guide us through the mazes we have built, to warn us of dangers on the way in real time, to help us find food, shelter, friends, and any other thing in the world.
Then we even dare to complain about how much others like their little pocket sized glowing magic rectangles.
I feel so grateful that my present self has this gift. Because of it, I feel so much more wealthy and well than my previous self, who lived in the days before we all were this connected. It is a wealth and richness of one another. So I have hope that we can build on this platform of connectedness to take care of one another and solve our problems.
“The roots of all goodness lie in the soil of appreciation for goodness.” -Dalai Lama
