Like Clouds in the Sky

People view pretty much everything through prisms, perspectives, with them at the center, qualifier of all existence around them. In many cases we struggle to understand our connection and place in the endless narrative of life and existence. So, we go about building our lens of reality, attempting to categorize, define and explain “everything,” even that which we truly do not understand. We interpret the world around us based upon our lived experiences, critical analysis, inspection, inquiry, experiments, learning, and some we are just told. For instance, our frameworks of cultural, society, family practices, religions, traditions, customs, information we consume, our everyday activities. Just as we did when we were children identifying images within clouds in the sky. We impress what we can see, what we want to see...sometimes it is really not there but we work so hard imposing our outline to fabricate an image, making it fit, with little dots, characteristics, events, narratives very crude outline/s of a thing or things. And then we swear by them, that it is there, scant points of datum as our proof, outliers, anomalies making it fit, making it exists because that is what we want to see, that’s what we want to believe....in our minds we attempt to explain all things. This is some of what is laced in “The Demon-Haunted World: Science as a Candle in the Dark” by Carl Sagan & Ann Druyan.

Well, even from my good and bad, hardships and beautiful experiences, I still believe in humanity, in human potential, and in the inherent good of people, “all people” .... We cannot resign ourselves to completely wiping out a group of people, even with all the horrid and vicious crap some have done, repeatedly. We must push and test our frameworks determining how robust they are, feeding new information, continuous learning, growing and expanding beyond the bounds of what we “claim to know”....we cannot accept on face value blanket labeling of an entire group of people as no good, unworthy, or worthless....we have to press our assumptions making ourselves extremely uncomfortable to learn more, know more, gather more diverse perspectives, and do better to understand beyond limited outlines that we fabricated like the clouds in the sky outlining imposing a shape we contrived in our minds...Yes, it can be good or bad but it still is just our perspectives, one perspective, one datum, and one limited framework we stuff an entire group of people into.

Humans naturally seek patterns, sequences, points of connection as proof to affirm or disprove information.... We must be critical thinkers, knowing that we can fall victim to systemic, negative, and very narrow descriptors.... We must be consummate learners in this Life, to grow, to expand, and to strive towards our better Selves. If we always default to negative and thinking the worst of people eventually our entire world will be nothing but demons within our minds made manifest in the world that surrounds us. Plumes of terror attacks, atrocious acts/crimes against people, against humanity, battles, carnage, and missions of war, senseless loss of life, can cloud over our vision and hope for Humanity. We start to see nothing but points of heinous acts as the outline of our reality, as essence of who we are, and that we can be nothing more.

I know in my heart, there is so much more to the fabric and spirit of who and what people are… we can, No, we must turn towards empathy, humanity, caring, compassion, help, learning, and in some respect forgiveness and reconciliation to become more than the evil plotted out before our Eyes. I know deep in the hearts and spirits of people, there is more to us than destruction, murder, violence, bombing, and killing. If not, we truly are the hands of our own inevitable destruction. And that I cannot and am unwilling to accept.

Search thy hearts.

Take care.

“A Rock shaped, cut by currents thrashing, tumults of life's waves, artistic beauty a life engaged. Not sitting within gated comfort out of reach fearful of lessons to be learned, hurts to be felt and pains to be born as thy walketh within a path of thy Light.” By Shabazz Rah-Khem

Working for a better Life & World. Advance inclusive democracy for the entire human family through progressive education & change, justice, authentic belonging, constructively improving people’s lives, by equitable access to resources socially, politically, & economically.