If you can't take any more, maybe it's because you can't let go

The world's is sad shape. I mean that literally. I don't know how anyone can look out into the world and not be sad at what is happening, what's not happening, what's being said and how it's being said, and at how helpless all of that makes us feel. If you think you've got things under control, you're not paying attention to anything but yourself. But life's not about you, yourself, or what you personally think is right, wrong or indifferent.

Not being an ardent, only an interested, student of history, I can't say for sure, but the indications are strong -- very strong -- that we human beings haven't managed to learn very much in the course of our collective sojourn on this planet. For lack of a better number, let us say 100,000 years of hominoid and human history, most undocumented of course, and there's no real evidence that we're any better off inside that our forebears.

Oh sure, we've developed lots and lots of techologies and gadgets that were supposed to have made our lives easier, and while we now live statistically longer than our ancestors, there's no real signs that we're living better. We've simply traded physical ailments for mental and psychic ones. We've made it possible for our bodies to survive for a surprisingly long time, but we're not happier about it or doing it.

Take a moment and be honest with yourself: you're in the privileged position of being able to read this post. Thousands of years of hard work and sacrifice ... millions of deaths and lots of privation ... went into to making it possible for you to be able to do so. And ... ? Aside from the other car in the garage or the last bank statement or the country-club membership, are you truly satisfied with your life and the lives of those close to you, or you just living as if you were. You're completely and utterly content with the state of your own being and that of the world in which you find yourself? If so, then why are you reading this?

Anyone who looks into this blog a couple of times and all of you who peek in more often than not know unequivocally that I am not. The country into which I was unexpectedly and accidentally born has mutated into something that I cannot recognize anymore. The country which I have chosen to be my home is becoming colder, harder, more ruthless and irrationally violent than I would have hoped. The world in which I one day woke up has become a plundered and polluted environment that I wouldn't wish upon my worst enemy (if I had one), let alone upon my grandchildren for whom I'd sacrifice everything I have if I knew they'd suffer even one second less. But, I know as well, my sacrifice would be like every sacrifice ever made: in vain. Because we refuse to recognized, let alone acknowledge, that nothing -- absolutely nothing -- has to be the way it is. Things are as they are, not because we have made them that way ... we didn't wake up one morning and say, "Hey, let's see if we can't screw up our world beyond all recognition." ... rather because we have let them become that way because we just didn't know what else to do.

In contrast to what I'm pretty sure most people believe, I do not believe that human beings are inherently evil. By the same token, I also do not believe that human beings are inherently good. What I do know -- or, perhaps more cautiously stated, believe -- is that human beings simply are.

There are lots of things that simply are: the whole universe and everything in it. It's just there. We didn't put it there. We didn't make up the rules and laws that govern how things happen there. It's just there. We don't even have to want to explore the Mystery of Creation or want to have an answer to the big-W question, "Why?", to agree that whatever is is, and that's all we have to deal with. We human beings are simply a part of that. It doesn't matter whether we believe some omnipotent being put us here or whether we're the product of some alien intelligence gone wrong (or right) or whether there even is some omnipotent being or just blind randomness. It doesn't matter for the simple reason that we're here and we have to deal with whatever it is we are confronted with. We, as a species, but particularly as individuals, know deep in our hearts that we're here and somehow someway we have to come to terms with that. Do we really think that any more than that is essential for our well-being?

Maybe. There are many of us who are always on the lookout for that "more", whatever it may be. It's simply hard to believe that this physical mess, with all its shortcomings, deprivations, pain snd suffering is "all there is". I have a body, which I can see, and a whole lot of wonderful (and awful) sensations that I can feel, and that makes me wonder about those who want to tell me that the physical (what I can access through my five senses) is all there is to Life. That's not enough. It comes up too short. There is so much more that moves me (sorrow, joy, hope, that feeling you get when you actually experience a sunrise or sunset or holding the hand of a person who dies) that I can't help but feel that my materialist friends and their simple chemical reactions in my brain and neuron-synapse firings can't really get into the game at all. I understand them, I think, but I don't know why I would want to live in a world that devoid of meaning.

But when I get on Facebook, for example, I'm suddenly confronted with diehard materialist who still find beauty in a work of art, exhilaration at a new experience, despair when a loved one departs and anger when they see injustice being committed. I don't know why they have (or better, acknowledge) those feelings (or maybe they're only pretending they do), but I'm nevertheless glad that they have them and share them. There's a lot wrong with social media, don't get me wrong, but sharing with others isn't one of them.

The point is really this: regardless of whether they are materialists, anti-religionists, born-again hopers, political activists, politically interested by-standers, environmentalists, free-market apologists, spiritual seekers, anarchists, democratic idealists, Realpolitik-realists, traditionalists, conservatives, liberals, militaristic-go-getters; pacifists, in the end, it just doesn't matter at all. All of them, regardless of where they're "coming from", generally believe that the world is going to hell in a handbasket. They're not satisfied with things "as they are" and they all share the same belief that regardless of how things are, it's not the way they have to be.

I'll be honest, right up front: that amazes me to no end. If I had sleepless nights, that would cause them: how can it be that so many people from so many different perspectives, imbued in so many different "philosophies", "blinded" by so many different belief systems and religions all come to the same conclusion: the world as we experience it is anything but the best possible world (to corruptingly paraphrase Leibnitz)? Shouldn't that give us pause to reflect? I think, "yes", but apparently much of the world doesn't think so at all.

OK, some people aren't reflecting because they think they have all the answers and if the rest of us would just let them have their way, we'd all be "saved" or at least have some kind of utopia on earth. Bzzzzzz! Wrong answer. We'd just have their limited, individual bullshit to put up with. None of us individually has T-H-E answer. We may have a contribution to the answer, but it's not all of the answer. The answer, whatever it may be, is bigger than all of us.

None of us -- neither you, dear reader, nor I -- is going to save the world. It may just be that the world, as we know it, does not need saving. It's not in good shape, that's for sure; it's in sad shape, as all of us know; but it may not be doomed.

It could also be that we don't need a strong leader, a long-lost messiah, a forgotten prophet or a supergenius to get us out of the dilemma in which we find ourselves. Did it ever occur to you that if you -- yes, just you ... little, old insignificant you -- started acting like you mattered (at least in the immediate world in which you find yourself) that the world at large might become a different world altogether? I believe it would.

Most of us are fed up with "the world as it is", but it is that way because we make it that way. If we act differently, no matter how insignificantly, the cumulative effect would be unignorable. We don't act differently because we think that however the world is is simply beyond our control. It is. But, it is not beyond our influence. We can change the world, truly, but we have to change ourselves.

I'm not asking you to become a different person overnight. That would be ludicrous, even if it were possible. I'm not even asking you to change your mind or way of thinking, though that would induce a change that may be hard to take. All I'm asking is for you to do is simply "let go" ... of all the ballast, the opinions, the solutions, the leaders, the parties, the programs, the whatever that you thought might make a difference. None of it will. The world will change -- and for the better, I can assure you -- when you finally start acting in a way that you know is right: listen, sympathize, and have compassion for others: first in your immediate environment, and slowly, but surely, in an ever-expanding circle of immediateness.

Just let go of what you think is right, and act as if you knew what right is.