"Loss is not a deficit. It is a shifting of weight. It’s a reorganization of soul and will and life and light and purpose. WE create a new normal. We cannot be mired in fear of loss, fear of terror, fear of fear. We must step into the creation of our lives—daily. We must be a light that radiates outward and affects our elders, our juniors, our peers. And when we die, when we go, those we once led will step in, and in turn lead. We each must lead in order to affect leaders around us. We must realize the chain of worth and recognize our power is not held in whom we choose or whom we adore or disdain or desire. It is in ourselves and in the desire itself. Reach deep within for the balance and the ballast of your strength. It comes from love. It grows from faith and trust. It thrives in sharing your understanding. Be a light and know that light does not stop with you if you stop. It continues rippling out to every one of us, so that when one life is extinguished, it's light is not put out. It carries on, through those we’ve affected, those we love, those we’ve led. "
This came out yesterday after weeks of gestating loss, and uncountable hours meditating on personal accountability. I got scared about the great American hope we're placing on our presidential candidates, to pull us out of this country's present abyss. Loss in our lives is inevitable. Death is inevitable. Yet, HOPE and personal accountability cannot go with it. We each must remember our individual contribution to the equation of our lives. We cannot rely on one person to pull us out of a nose dive, whether personal, political, national, or in our neighborhood. Shift the weight of hope to your shoulders, too. Take on what you don't like, if just in living by example. Perspective will save us. Strength in our own characters will save us.
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It's an unbearably geeky reference, but I've always like the song "Hero" from the SpiderMan soundtrack.
ReplyDelete"Some say a hero will save us
I'm not going to stand here and wait"
It's also been said "be the change you want to see in the world"
There are many things we cannot change, cannot impact... but MANY things that we can
The most pressing being the awareness that we each are our own saviors. However it is that we remember--divinely or politically--that WE ARE NOT LOST when plans go radically awry, when hope goes peekid, this is the most important impact we make.
ReplyDeleteI waited till I was 35 for my dad to save me, help me, see me as someone who needed his parental shepherding. Going it alone during a debilating health condition, I was upset and grasping at anything that could be a factor in my illness, emotional, physical, psychic. When I said to a health practitioner, "What's it going to take for my dad to notice that I need him? What has to happen to me?"
The air sucked out of the room and she looked at me gravely. "Bite your tongue," she said. "You need to take care of yourself, and believe that YOU are your protector, no one else."
She was saying what I am saying now. We can place hope in people and things outside ourselves--leaders and lovers and politicians--but it is only that little flame in us that is going to keep us alive and thriving when shit hits the fan.