9.03.2003
Common Sense
edited for content and clarity 9.03
"The love for justice that is in us is not only the best part of our being, but it is also the most true to our nature"
--Cesar Chavez
So here's what I did today. I got a bunch of references to a friend about Plastics/phthalates and dioxins. Afterwards I did laundry, stopped and visited with a neighbor, had a couple beers, watched little kids play. Today I reveled in the full span of life. Reconciling its contradictions. My elderly neighbor across the way was taken off in an ambulance. Beautiful children laughing in the breeze, playing with dog. I spent the last 5 days or so visiting with my partner's really sick Grandmas and family. Saw brave, frail little women shining it on. Saw loved ones- in the sense of people putting love to the fore, doing what is natural as people.
Life is about our connections and the future we share, I imagine, I have been immersed in its beauty and pathos as well. Someone whose perspective I respect said to be sure to take time, to not "burn out" on blogging. I took the advice to heart and LIVED today.
Remember what we are striving for. Life is comprised of beauty as well as pain, the full spectrum of being human. Give folks you love a hug. Realize what a miracle all this being is, this mundane everyday stuff, breathing and working and sharing life. Our time here is fleeting- look outside, spring turned to summer and fall is showing its face. Being human is this brief but poignant experience. The more you live the more it is obvious that attempt to compartmentalize and commodify it, to simplify it into catchphrases that sell short it's wonder are a bunch of crap. One "casualty" of war sounds as if it is nothing if quantifying, it is everything if that one casualty is someone you love. And all war dead are someone's son, someone's brother or sister- both ours and "the enemy's" as well as the innocent non-combatants killed.
Jesus personified our values all those years ago, Gandhi lived them before the world, Martin Luther King showed us the way while actualizing them in word and action; let's break the chains with them. We can break the BS bonds of the overculture if we let our innate common sense take the fore. Life is about being alive, no matter what the Pharisees or the colonizers or the rascists or the GOP or multinational corporations tell you. Try to put a pricetag on minutes with folks you love. On your loved ones. Does "the market" speak for you there? Does life for you call out to a higher, more appropriate standard?
Did that thought give you perspective? Good. Look, all of a sudden we are winning already.
The struggle is good. Everyday. For the long haul...
9/03/2003
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