A Declaration of Awareness

While Israel engaged Palestine and pro-Russian rebels shot a passenger jet out of the sky last week, the posts here at the Rebellion were about love, acceptance, finding peace, seeking joy and generally tripping out on the present moment. After hearing about MH17, I almost regretted scheduling those posts. In the space of a few short days, the world became an even darker and grimmer place, and I questioned whether it was appropriate to tout the power of positive energy when people elsewhere live in daily terror of losing something or someone precious. I went to bed on Friday night immensely grateful that I am not among those people. I am safe. I am employed. I have food, shelter, and enough money to live more than comfortably compared to folks trapped in a war zone halfway around the globe. Heck, I’m in better shape than people living in the BC interior, where wildfires have a handful of communities on evacuation alert if not on full evacuation order, so I don’t have to go far to ask myself how naïve am I, really?

Well, I’m not naïve. I’m not oblivious or insensitive, either. I believe what I believe, and a large part of my belief is that humans suffer when other humans make selfish decisions. Wars have raged in distant places for centuries—that doesn’t make it right, but we’re all made more aware of conflict and tragedy by a media that fixates on negative forces in pursuit of ratings. Just as we hear nothing of the countless air flights that land safely, we begin to believe that everyone is a terrorist, that no child is safe, and we’ll all be victims of identity fraud.

I sat out on my porch this morning and listened to the wind in the trees. The ocean was calm. The sun was trying to pierce the clouds and actually succeeding in spots. I watched a beam break through and remembered something. There is good in the world. Good people, brave people, loving people. People trying to cure cancer. People sheltering the homeless. People caring for sick children. People who aren’t aiming rockets at civilian communities or passenger airliners. Most of us are doing the best we can with what we have. Most of us are grateful. The rest of us are wounded and trying to heal ourselves. Yes, it’s horrible out there. Gods know the media is ever so delighted to keep telling us so, and by the same gods, we’re lapping it up like cream, but really, the scales are better balanced than we’re led to believe.

Please don’t be led. Please don’t lose hope. Please be grateful and please be compassionate—and if this seems aimed at you, it’s only my inside voice reminding Ru of what is truly valuable. That would be love, acceptance, finding peace, seeking joy, and generally tripping out on the present moment.

Be aware of the light as well as the dark, for both exist in equal measure.

With love,