There’s a Post-it taped to my bathroom mirror that says, “Remember: Life can be surprising and delightful.” I need this reminder because one of my trauma responses is hypervigilance. I’m constantly scanning for threats and waiting for the next terrible thing to happen. It’s a survival strategy, but not a particularly fun one.
Saturday was a sweet reminder that life can be surprising and delightful. I met up with a new friend at my favorite vegan bakery and coffee shop. She’s a professional astrologer and, of course, someone I’d like to know better. During our conversation, she said she’s moving. When I asked where, it turns out she’ll be about five blocks away from me! OMG, amazing! I love hyperlocal friends! The possibility of a spontaneous hang increases exponentially!
Ever since my friend and neighbor Emma moved out years ago, I’ve wanted another hyperlocal friend, so this is a potentially answered prayer. TBD because we’re still getting to know each other but maybe! And regardless, how often do you meet someone about to live on your same street?!?
Leaving the coffee shop, I checked my transit options and instead of waiting 10 minutes or so for the bus, I had to wait 30 because the next scheduled bus was canceled. To kill time, I wandered along the street and drifted into a flower shop. On a whim, I asked if they had flower-arranging classes because I’ve never done that before and would like to. When the cute florist said no, the interaction could have ended there, but it didn’t.
He made a joke that the store is terrible about promoting itself and suggested I write down my name and email address. We had a friendly/flirty conversation for the next 30 minutes, and he gave me two allium flowers for free.
The flowers in question.
That definitely wasn’t on my bingo card for the day! But it was a sweet reminder of exactly that: Life can be surprising and delightful. I often think I know what’s coming, that there’s a script for how each day will play out, but there isn’t. Every day is filled with the possibility of something unexpected, something delightful, something that reminds us there is good and beauty and joy in the world.
I perpetually want to know the future so I can feel safe in the present but that’s not how life works. Safety comes from being here, now. Here, now. As Ram Dass, author of Be Here Now wrote, “What are you doing? Planning for the future? Well it’s all right now but later? Forget it baby, that’s later. Now is now. Are you going to be here or not? It’s as simple as that!”
Being here, now is also what allows me to be surprised and delighted. If I’m too focused on what’s happening next, I don’t create space to be in the moment and it turns out sometimes the present moment is pretty wonderful.
I dream of a world where we come back to here and now. A world where instead of predicting the future and imagining it will be terrible, we remember that life can amaze us, in a good way. A world where we remember life can be surprising and delightful.
Another world is not only possible, it’s probable.
Lately, I’m on a genealogy kick trying to suss out who I’m related to and how. It’s endlessly fascinating because it’s a puzzle but also a web. As you know, there are many offshoots of a family tree — aunts, uncles, cousins — who all have their own direct family lines. But what’s even more interesting is that we’re all related, literally.
If you go back far enough, you reach a date when family trees share not just one ancestor in common but every ancestor in common, which is called the genetic isopoint. In other words, the family trees of any two people on the earth now, no matter how distantly related they seem, trace back to the same set of individuals. Geneticist Adam Rutherford told Scientific American, “If you were alive at the genetic isopoint, then you are the ancestor of either everyone alive today or no one alive today.” The genetic isopoint occurred somewhere between 5300 and 2200 B.C., according to statistical calculations.
“In relation to race, it absolutely, categorically demolishes the idea of lineage purity,” Rutherford added. That’s because no person has forebears from just one ethnic background or region of the world. Instead, we are all related. The poet Satyendra Dutta expresses this beautifully when he says, “There is only one race in the entire world, and the name of that race is the human race. We are bound together with the same breast milk of Mother Earth, and the same sun and moon are our common companions.”
Exactly! The same sun, moon, and stars are our common companions and we are all living on the same planet Earth. Yet somehow we forget that. We get caught up in dividing ourselves into this group or that. We say, “I’m not like you,” but is that really true? Don’t we all have the same feelings and needs? Aren’t we more alike than we are different? What do we get by focusing on differences, anyway?
My spiritual teacher said, “The opportunists tried in the past, are trying at present, and will try even in the future to fulfill their narrow desires by keeping the human race disunited. By severely reproaching this opportunistic craftiness through your noble deeds, you draw nigh the unknown strangers living far away and build a healthy world-based human family. Ignoring the brute forces, the sky-kissing arrogance, hypocrisy, immorality, and glib outbursts of the conceited people, go ahead towards your cherished goal.”
The cherished goal isn’t to become a billionaire, by the way. As you likely guessed, it’s to feel the sweet union between yourself and something greater than yourself. This is a quote from my spiritual teacher, after all.
Learning about genealogy reminds me we’re a universal family, quite literally. We are like a garden filled with numerous flowers, but ultimately all a part of the same garden. Like flowers, on the surface, we have different petals, different leaves. Some of us require more water and some of us require less, but we are all flowers. In other words, we’re all humans a part of the same race.
I dream of a world where we treat each other like family. A world where we extend care and appreciation to strangers because we recognize, they, too, are our siblings. A world where we understand there’s only one race, the human race. A world where we embrace the idea of a literal universal family.
Another world is not only possible, it’s probable.
I keep thinking about all the circumstances and events that led to me being here, right now. How my ancestors had to have XYZ happen to them. How my parents had to meet. All of that and many more things. It’s a wonder. So often I feel blasé about being alive because when there are nearly 8 billion people in the world, is it really such a miracle to be in human form? Is it really so precious? According to many spiritual teachers, including mine, yes.
Take this story from a Buddhist text. The Buddha spoke to a group of monks and said, “Monks, suppose that this great Earth was totally covered with water and a man were to toss a yoke with a single hole into the water. A wind from the west would push it east; a wind from the east would push it west; a wind from the north would push it south; a wind from the south would push it north. And suppose a blind sea turtle was there. It would come to the surface only once every 100 years.
“Now, what do you suppose the chances would be that a blind turtle, coming once to the surface every 100 years, would stick its neck into the yoke with a single hole?” The monks answered, “It would be very unusual, sir, that a blind turtle coming to the surface once every 100 years would stick its neck into the yoke.” The Buddha replied, “And just so, it is very, very rare that one attains the human state.”
What a statement! What odds! It’s hard to square that with our current population, but that’s a human-centered perspective. Think about all the plants, animals, insects, bacteria even. There are probably 8 billion bacteria on my pinky finger alone. So in that context, wow, yes, human life is a wonder. That’s even more true when you take into account infertility. I know many, many people who have struggled to get pregnant. They had to get IVF or a sperm donor or a surrogate. They’ve suffered miscarriages. They’ve tried for years. It’s not so easy to get pregnant.
Being a person is like winning the lottery but it’s easy to forget that in the humdrum of daily life. When you’re struggling to pay your bills or the roof leaks or you’re irritated with your neighbor, being alive doesn’t feel like a wonder. But it is. We often search outside ourselves for wonder. We want to be wowed by a beautiful sunset or a spectacular show. We want to string together a life with one memorable experience after another by swimming with dolphins and climbing a volcano. But what I’m learning is that just to be alive is awe-inspiring. To take a breath. To pump blood through our bodies.
My rabbi, Michael Lerner, often says if you want to feel more awe, go outside every night for a month, look at the stars, and say, “Wow! Fantastic! Amazing!” I think you can do the same thing with yourself. You can look in the mirror, notice your chest rising and falling, and say, “Wow! Fantastic! Amazing!” Because it is.
I dream of a world where we recognize the wonder of being in human form. A world where we understand how rare and precious it is to be alive on this planet at this time. A world where we remember taking a breath every day is a miracle to behold.
Another world is not only possible, it’s probable.
Several years ago I watched a Ted Talk by Elizabeth Gilbert on extreme success and extreme failure. She made the point that both positions catapult you out of your normal range of emotion and so both are hard to process. Both feel surreal because they aren’t everyday occurrences. Her point is resonating with me because I just got back from my sister’s wedding.
Not only did I see extended family for the first time since 2015 or 2016, but I also saw my sister’s friends from middle and high school. These are people I know too, although obviously not as well. They aren’t my friends but they are people who were tangentially in my life. We reconnected for a brief moment in time, a few hours, and that was it. Not only did I see them, but friends Rosie and I have in common, and, of course, immediate family, who don’t live close to me. It’s hard, really hard, to connect with people who mean something to me and then separate again.
As much as I would like to maintain relationships with all the people I love and care about, it’s not possible. Having a weekend where that happens to a degree is difficult because I get a small taste of what I want, but just that small taste.
Maybe other people have already made peace with this and don’t really care, but that’s not me. My Sanskrit name, Radha, means the personification of love so in my ideal world, I’d be close with every person I hold in my heart. I’d see all of them regularly. We’d be up to date on each other’s lives. We’d have adventures together. We’d travel together. We’d be integrally connected. But that doesn’t happen.
Maybe instead of trying to force the impossible, I can embrace the ephemeral. This is why people talk about living in the moment, right? Because this moment and the next and the next aren’t repeatable? As much as we try to recreate experiences, we can’t, can we? That means sometimes life will take you far and wide. You’ll experience moments that are so surreal they’re hard to comprehend. It may be extreme success, dismal failure, or the convergence of multiple people from various points in your life. Whatever it is, I’ll bet you’ll have surreal experiences too.
I don’t have a lesson here. I don’t have any advice. The best I can do is recognize sometimes I won’t be able to integrate certain experiences because they’re so outside the range of normal that I can’t. And that’s OK. That, too, is what it means to be alive. Embracing the surreal is just a part of life.
I dream of a world where we recognize we will have moments that aren’t in our normal range. A world where we understand some things will feel surreal. A world where we embrace that, accept that reality and make peace with it.
Another world is not only possible, it’s probable.
My spiritual teacher uses the word “beatitude” a lot because that is his wish for everyone, that we all experience felicity of the highest kind, or consummate bliss. That got me thinking about bliss, what it means to be blissful, and how that squares with, well, life. For instance, on New Year’s Day, my parents and I found the back window of our car rental smashed in. How does that fit in with consummate bliss?
I don’t know because I’m just a human being, but what I do know, according to my spiritual philosophy, is every entity is moving from crudeness toward subtlety (some more quickly than others). The image that comes to mind is that of a river flowing toward the ocean. A current is carrying us from where we are now to somewhere else. Parts of the river are calm, others are choppy. While flowing down this river we may experience anger, fear, or sorrow, but the one constant is the water itself. Maybe bliss is like that. Maybe it’s the ever-present water below carrying us forward.
In my spiritual tradition we have a word for viewing the world from this lens. It’s called madhuvidyá. Madhuvidyá literally means “honey knowledge” and requires seeing everything, EVERYTHING, as an expression of an infinite loving consciousness, also known as Brahma. Yes, that means our car rental window getting smashed. It also means all the bad things, all the irritations, all the whatever that seem anything but blissful.
Working on this “honey knowledge” thing. Photo by Arwin Neil Baichoo on Unsplash
“This universe of ours is not absolute truth – it is only a relative truth,” my spiritual teacher says. “So the wise should try to know the absolute truth. But simultaneously it is also desirable that while striving to realize the Supreme Entity one should maintain an adjustment with this relative world. While doing one’s duties properly with the application of madhuvidyá, one can achieve permanent cessation of afflictions from this relative world. Then all the entities of this world will be as sweet as honey for the spiritual aspirant.”
That’s what I want for myself. I want all the entities of this world to be as sweet as honey. Not in a spiritual bypassing sort of way, but a recognition of both the relative truth and the absolute truth. The relative truth is I was so pissed off about the smashed window I screamed at the top of my lungs, cussing out whoever did it. And the absolute truth is the glass scattered across our backseat, the person or people who broke the window, and whatever they used to break it, are also Brahma, are also love, are also the Supreme.
As I enter this new year, it will be easy to fall into the trap of seeing things in black and white. Or labeling them as good or bad. But maybe I can also keep in the back of my mind that I’m evolving, the world is evolving, and the river we’re traveling on will never run smooth. But regardless, the water pushing us forward is there, is steady, is constant, and quintessentially is love itself.
I dream of a world where we can hold relative truths as well as the absolute truth. A world where we understand rough things will happen to us but love is still there. A world where we realize we’re all on a river moving forward in our evolution. A world where we do our best to lace our perspective with honey knowledge so that we can experience untold sweetness.
Another world is not only possible, it’s probable.
This weekend a friend told me his friends are getting into cryptocurrency so they can make a lot of money. My response was, “So they can do what? Retire early and satisfy every pleasure they have? Or build a rocket ship into space while there are people literally starving to death?”
I mean, I understand the impulse. Our society lauds the accumulation of wealth. When Jeff Bezos launched into space, morning shows allocated 212 minutes to discussing it. In contrast, they spent 267 minutes for all of 2020 discussing the climate crisis even though the climate crisis is a far bigger story that impacts the entire world. In the U.S. anyway, we treat money like it’s the most important thing, as if being wealthy is the greatest accomplishment of a person’s life. We see this not only in media coverage, but also in how wealthy people are allowed to become richer. We aren’t taxing the rich to fund things like schools, roads, bridges, healthcare, or anything that would benefit the many. No. Instead we’re letting people accumulate wealth unchecked so they can visit space for 10 minutes on the backs of people who are working in inhumane conditions.
I’m not someone who thinks money is the root of all evil. I don’t think we should go back to a time of bartering for all our needs. Money makes life more comfortable, absolutely, and being poor is one of the hardest, most stressful situations a person can find themselves in. But why are some people allowed to make millions in one day while others are working multiple jobs just to cover all their expenses? And furthermore, what’s the point of making so much money you can buy a private island?
My spiritual teacher says:
“A mind, driven by many psychic [desires] is the prisoner of innumerable predicaments. In such a condition, the human mind becomes extroversial, multi-directional, weak, and static. It is propelled by the principle of selfish pleasure, which leads it down the path of counter-evolution. … As people have to satisfy their unrestrained psychic [desires] with limited objects of wealth, they often create interpersonal and inter-group conflicts. The collective psychology arising from many objectified human minds gives rise to social inequality, economic exploitation, political repression, religious bigotry, cultural perversion, and the all-round degradation of the individual and society. Crude psychic [desires] cause the degeneration of individual and collective mind, and thus bring about the downfall of the society.”
I’d say we’re seeing that now. Society certainly seems to be moving in a downward direction in many regards. So what’s the point of life if it’s not to get as much wealth as possible and satisfy every selfish pleasure that enters your brain? Take it from someone who is rich and famous, Jim Carrey, who said, “I hope everybody could get rich and famous and will have everything they ever dreamed of, so they will know that it’s not the answer.”
The answer instead is to eradicate all inequalities and contribute to society in such a way that we’re supporting each other, taking care of each other. The answer is to live in this world, to ensure everyone has their basic needs met, but also recognize there’s more to being alive than material gain. Ultimately what we’re seeking is infinite pleasure, infinite happiness, and that only comes from something that is also infinite: communing with the loving consciousness that pervades this universe.
I dream of a world where we understand despite what much of society tells us, the point of life is not to get rich and famous. A world where we realize satisfying every selfish pleasure only leads to our downfall and the downfall of society. A world where we appreciate material goods, but also recognize ultimately life is more enjoyable if we serve society and commune with spirit.
Another world is not only possible, it’s probable.
In my 20s, I was enthralled by the Law of Attraction. During that time, the movie The Secret came out, which popularized the subject. I found the narrative so compelling – your mind is powerful, like attracts like, etc. Hearing story after story of people who were able to walk again after a doctor told them they wouldn’t, or how they wrote themselves a check for $1 million and were finally able to cash it all because they visualized those outcomes, was alluring. However, the Law of Attraction fell out of favor with me when it didn’t bring me the man of my dreams and also when I realized in addition to the Law of Attraction, there’s the Law of Karma.
The Law of Karma trumps the Law of Attraction every time because you cannot escape the consequences for your actions no matter how positive you are. And according to my spiritual philosophy, some of those consequences can play out over lifetimes. I no longer focus so much on what my little ego wants because I find it’s better to align my will with God’s will. Things always work out better when I do, and at the same time, I also know my mind is powerful. What and how I think makes a difference.
This picture will make sense later. Photo by Jeffrey Eisen on Unsplash
For instance, once when I was in college I slept in a tent with a friend and while we were out and about, it started to rain. My friend fretted about our possessions getting wet, absolutely certain the rain would seep into our tent. I kept telling her, “I’m sure it’s fine.” Do you know what happened when we got back to the tent? Her belongings were wet while my belongings were dry. I mean honestly, you can’t make this stuff up.
I mention this because I’m again reminded how an optimistic attitude can make a difference, not only in how we feel, but also how we experience the world. What if we believed things would work out? That we’d be OK? What if we were motivated by hope instead of fear? What if we trained our minds to ferret out the good things instead of the bad?
I have another story for you. One day back in 2015, I rode the bus and while looking out the window noticed the barest glimmer of a rainbow, which I tried to capture on my phone. In my excitement, I started texting everyone and my mother, especially when the bus crested a hill and I noticed the rainbow ringed the sun. It was a sight to behold. In contrast, the two women sitting in front of me on the bus didn’t notice a thing. They were caught up in complaining about their health problems and various other troubles. Here I was having a transcendent moment, marveling at the beauty of the world, and in the same physical space, the women in front of me were not.
What are we noticing? What are we focusing on? It matters. Living in a perpetual state of pessimism sucks so why not instead notice the rainbows?
I dream of a world where we recognize the importance of both the Law of Attraction and the Law of Karma. A world where we place each in their proper proportion. A world where we cultivate optimism because we recognize optimism can make our lives more enjoyable. A world where we do our best to notice life’s rainbows.
Another world is not only possible, it’s probable.
Last week I wrote about the perspective Bhutan has taken in this pandemic that everyone is a part of one big family and how that’s played out in terms of the country’s policies. Here in the U.S., the more prevalent perspective is one of rugged individualism and separateness. Instead of viewing all of us as being in this together, we operate from a materialist worldview that says only matter is real and humans are alienated from not only each other, but everything.
From this perspective, consciousness is a “strange aberration that happens as an accidental byproduct of chemical interactions,” to quote my friend Amal Jacobson. The materialist worldview says the cosmos doesn’t have any consciousness and thus it becomes much easier to objectify, well, everything. Nature doesn’t have any value beyond its utilitarian value. A tree is worth more dead than it is alive. Furthermore, nature becomes something “out there” that we go to. We see this in the way we, me included, talk about nature. “I was out in nature in this weekend” is a common phrase we all say.
We are this and this is us. Photo by Jeremy Thomas on Unsplash
However, “out in nature” implies we’re separate from nature, that somehow we’re not included in this vast universe. The phrase also implies that we could ever get away from nature. That’s not possible even in the densest of cities because the very ground we stand on is nature, and furthermore, we are natural too.
Rebecca Solnit speaks to this in a Sierra magazine article when she writes, “It took the pervasiveness of radioactive fallout in the 1950s and pesticides in the 1960s to wake conservationists up to the fact that nothing is separate, and you can’t truly protect a place by setting it apart.”
You can’t protect a place by setting it apart because it’s impossible to truly be apart. That’s why there’s so much emphasis on intersectionality these days. We all intersect in various ways. Environmental justice goes hand in hand with social justice, for instance, because who typically pays the price for environmental destruction? Black, brown, and indigenous people. This cosmos is a spider web and if you pull on one thread, it vibrates the rest of them.
I have a friend who acknowledges this every morning in his prayers. He says, “I am eternally grateful to be an integrated particle in the infinite universe of your wisdom and will, and to live in your abundance and prosperity receiving your guidance, strength, mercy, and protection.” Gorgeous, right? I like the whole prayer, but in particular, I can’t help but wonder what would the world be like if we all felt this way? That we are an integrated particle that is only one part of a whole? The reality is materialism is a belief system just like what I’m proposing is also a belief system. Which one leads to a happier, healthier society? I think the answer is already obvious.
I dream of a world where we recognize no one is separate from one another. A world where we realize a thread of connection links not only human beings, but all beings. A world where we change our worldview and recognize we are an integrated particle of this vast universe and behave accordingly.
Another world is not only possible, it’s probable.
I’m resharing this post from September 2019 because once again, I find myself in a hallway, metaphorically speaking. That also means the audio clip below is from that time period. Enjoy.
A close friend of mine used an analogy the other day that’s stuck with me. She said her higher power has closed a door in her life and hasn’t opened another one yet. That means for now she’s stuck in a hallway, waiting for another door to open. Yesssssss. That’s so my life right now. I’m in limbo, in a hallway, waiting for something new, for a door to open, but it hasn’t yet and it’s uncomfortable.
I hate this phase. I think most people do. And at the same time, I recognize this is a part of life — it’s filled with speed and then pause. Even when breathing we inhale, pause slightly, and then exhale with another slight pause. When we walk, we put one foot on the ground or we can’t move forward. The left foot makes the next step only if the right foot prepares for the movement by being placed on the ground.
I’m waiting for my next door to open. Photo by Rhea Lofranco on Unsplash
My spiritual teacher says alternating between speed and pause is crucial for successful movement. “If we wish to say something about speed, or the characteristics of movement, we will have to acknowledge the necessity of the state of pause otherwise it will not be possible to move into the next stage,” he said. “This speed and pause will continue. Pause means gathering momentum for speed in the subsequent phase. If one closely watches the effect of speed on a particular community or the entire humanity, one sees that generally people eulogize the period of speed. However, we cannot afford to ignore the state of pause, because by judging what the previous state of pause was like, we can discern the speed of the next phase.”
A couple of things jump out at me from that quote. First of all, the pause is temporary. It feels like I’m going to be stuck in this hallway forever, but I won’t be. Things will change, they absolutely will, even if a part of me doesn’t believe that. I’m reminded just because I may not believe something doesn’t make it any less true. For instance, some people still believe the Earth is flat, but regardless, the Earth is round.
The other point that jumps out at me from the quote is the last bit, about how the state of pause can help discern the speed of the next phase. What I’m taking that to mean is my life is going to go off like a rocket. All of this momentum, this angst, is going to catapult me into the next phase and my life will move at warp speed. I cannot express how much I’m looking forward to it. And at the same time, I’m recognizing the necessity for this state of pause, this place where I’m spinning my wheels, revving my engine, and getting ready to zoom ahead. Pretty soon a door will open and I’m going to bolt through it. But for now, I’m here, in a hallway.
I dream of a world where we recognize the importance of limbo periods. A world where we understand in order to move ahead, we also have to pause, to gather momentum. A world where we recognize even when it seems like we’re standing still, it’s all in service of what’s next.
Another world is not only possible, it’s probable.
It’s a three-day weekend here in the U.S. and it has me contemplating another three-day weekend from 2013. It was Labor Day and I had just moved into a new place, a cottage. I was excited at the prospect of not sharing any walls or ceilings with a neighbor and looked forward to much-needed peace and quiet. However, on that Saturday, the property manager of the complex played loud music well into the night – 1 a.m. ticked by, and then 2 a.m.
I called her, no answer. I texted her, no answer. I left my bed and knocked on her front door. No answer. Finally, I walked around to her bedroom window and knocked, asking her to turn off her music. She complied. Peace at least.
However, the next morning, I woke up to 27 text messages from her that were mildly threatening: “How dare you knock on my window? How would you like it if I knocked on your window? I’m going to tell the landlord!” etc. I apologized for startling her but explained it escalated to that point because I wasn’t able to reach her in a less intrusive way. I thought that would be the end of it. Wrong. The next day I overheard her talking to my next-door neighbor about me. But what stuck out the most is she said, “It’s the weekend! I’m allowed to be as loud as I want on the weekend!”
No. Just no. You are NOT allowed to be as loud as you want because you don’t have work the next day. There are still rules and noise ordinances. What makes the situation even more infuriating is as a property manager she was supposed to be enforcing the rules, not breaking them.
There are all kinds of “American.” Photo by Frank Mckenna on Unsplash
This woman comes to mind frequently because her sense of entitlement and self-centeredness runs rampant in the U.S. I’m seeing that a lot especially during this pandemic. Some people think and behave as if their individual needs are more important than collective needs.
My spiritual teacher says, “But if we analyze with a cool brain, it becomes quite clear that just as my life is important to me, others’ lives are equally important to them; and if we do not give proper value to the lives of all creatures, then the development of the entire humanity becomes impossible.”
Furthermore, if we look at it a little more closely, we see collective welfare lies in individuals and individual welfare lies in collectivity. I tried to think of an example where my individual welfare doesn’t contribute to collective welfare, and none came to mind. In the case of my former property manager, her perceived individual welfare negatively impacted the collective because it meant not only I, but the other tenants, may also have been groggy and sleep-deprived, which in turn affected our mental functioning, which in turn affected our interactions with ourselves and others, and so on.
If I flip that around, getting enough sleep positively impacts the collective for the same reasons. In fact, my spiritual teacher is quite adamant that individual liberty should not go against the interests of the collective body. He says it is important for all of us to develop a rationalistic mentality, or “awakened conscience.” What that means is studying the pros and cons of each decision, but also factoring in whether the decision contributes to the welfare of all.
At this point people might be thinking I’m “un-American,” to which I say yes, I am, if “un-American” means I care about how everyone is doing, not just my small circle. Yes, I’m un-American if that means I value not just my life but life in general. Yes, I’m un-American if that means I think we should all learn how to live in harmony with one another in a more fair and equitable way. Yes, I’m un-American if that means I have my sights set on a better world for us all.
I dream of a world where we recognize collective welfare matters. A world where we realize individual welfare lives in the collective and collective welfare lies in the individual. A world where we all take care of each other. A world where one person is not allowed to negatively impact those around them. A world where we let ourselves be “un-American.”
Another world is not only possible, it’s probable.