Don’t Look Back

Last week, I watched Bill Maher and his four guests—two Democrats and two Republicans—argue back and forth about their upcoming election and what’s wrong with both candidates. The US is in a sticky pickle because, as I see it, the voting public is caught between a Trump and a hard place. When faced with two evils, folks generally choose the lesser one ... but in this race, how can you tell which is which?

No matter. I’m Canadian. My problem comes after the US election, when everyone else in the world has to deal with the outcome of their decision.

It was interesting, however, to hear people on both sides trying to outshout each other about “taking America back”, “getting America back”, and “reclaiming America”. One of them referred to regaining the country originally intended by the founding fathers.

Are you kidding me??? The country was founded over two hundred years ago, by privileged white European males who drew up a Constitution that would serve their interests and no one else’s. Think about it. When the country was formed, the only Africans in America were slaves, women were chattel, and the native Americans had been driven off their land by the guests they had welcomed but who refused to leave. The paperwork wasn’t written for anyone within those three groups. The right to bear arms meant that colonists on the frontier could defend themselves instead of waiting for the cavalry to ride over the hill. And they were pretty much defending themselves from the indigenous residents, so I’m of two minds on the fairness of the policy in the first place.

If I have learned anything in the past couple of years, it’s that nothing is ever going to be the same again. You cannot get back to the way it was because the way it is has changed so radically that previous rules can no longer apply. Society can’t rely on a document that was written in the dark ages because that document was written for the dark ages. Respect its purpose, sure, but then improve upon it, for crying out sideways!

We are not here to stay the same. We are not here to live in the past. We are here to move forward, to embrace each other and create something better than what we had yesterday (and I don’t mean building a better iPhone). Cleaving to an outdated document is not the way to fix today’s problems. One might even suggest that cleaving to that document is what created today’s problems. The world in 2016 is not remotely similar to the world in 1776 or whenever. Can we please leave that old world behind and work with each other to make something wondrous of the one we have?

Because it is wondrous. People are amazingly diverse, but our diversity is not what makes us magnificent. Our shared divinity is what make us magical. We are each capable of love, of compassion, of respect and gratitude and kindness. Our culture does not make us any of those things. Neither does our history. We should be using those things as starting points from which to grow and change ... but even as I write this, I realize that I might be missing my own point.

We are spiritual beings having a human experience. We are born divine. Many of us lose sight of it along the way. If time truly is cyclical and we are moving in circles, then perhaps we do want to go back to somewhere in the past. Let’s go further back than two measly centuries. Let’s go back to where we truly started, when we were born pure and untainted, radiant with love and no conditions, when we knew in our souls that all we needed to make a success of this life was to exercise our divinity and treat each other ...

... with love.