I came closest after the events of the G8/G20 summit protests in Toronto in the weeks surrounding June 29th. That was a helluva thing. It is saying a lot to unquestionably count it, and I do, as an experience of as supercharged a barrage of emotions as I have been witness to, ever.
Terror. Rage. Elation. Love, connection, a powerful, amazing love. Despair. Shock. Hope. Dread. Terror. Fury. Victimhood. Aggression. Terror.
Of course every person who reads that litany will have an individual array of associations, assumptions, reactions; my interpretations are also individual. Maybe you were there, maybe you weren't there, maybe you don't know what the G20 is, maybe you had the legal aid number on your arm, maybe you fled downtown because it was fucked. I think it's really worthwhile to make it a mode of operating to be making shared all of these experiences. All, everyone's. This is an active, receptive and participatory process. It's just the way for us to learn most thoroughly from the present as it becomes the past and we try to make decisions and reactions for the future to do it this way, with this spirit, with radical curiosity and valuing of perspectives. I think.
So this means I care what your experience of this thing is, of what any thing is, and I think it's really important that you remember to care about that, too. It's part of the story, we need it.
But I still didn't publish those posts, they didn't say it right, they didn't say it all.
I've been moved to get on a mountaintop and post about Michelle Obama's almost-wonderful and frustratingly uninspired initiatives to get Americans "healthy". I'm not an American and don't believe their population to be the seat of the power to change the world but the effect of shifts in American priorities is inappropriate not to consider, and consider employing. I think it's a little fucked up if this becomes a "War on Obesity" as though obesity is some independent foe, as though the plan of action isn't about teaching people about the function of food and the nature of nature. (specifically, human bodies.)
I've been close to ranting about the consumer industry's vested interest in making people feel really seriously shitty about themselves, and how the diet industry's targeted campaigns make me sick and meanwhile the artists and the spiritual are getting seriously confused about asceticism.
I've often wanted to scream from the largest soapbox I can find about "mental illness" and how clouded the perceptions are on what the hell that means. I know many hundreds of exquisite humans spinning through levels of suffering, madness, obsession, emotion, or stifledness, meeting many levels of acceptance, fear, rejection, marginalisation, denial and loving challenge. But I can't say everything about that, either. Or say it all right.
I've come close to making my break-the-silence rant be about compassion, about how barely-comprehensibly important it is that you, I, everyone, everyone, learn what it is to alienate another. I could say "to alienate another, or a group", but when you alienate an entire group it is individuals, many beings, many feeling, experiencing ones-like-you being stripped of whatever quality it is that you grant to 'people' in your head to make them considered with compassion. So that's just a really gut-sinkingly huge way to do the same thing.
Compassion - from "together" and "to endure". To endure together. Seriously.
I know it's a little romantic of me to desire to apply the etymological roots of this word when discussing how we go about it, about having compassion. But what if for a moment we take on the perspective that views us as sharing fundamental connectedness, and conceive of a collective way of construing what it is to be a person. Everyone's passion matters; makes sense. Life is endured by all. That's what we each are: one of the living. Undivided.
Anything creating divides that dehumanize will simplify things, make a lot of unstraightforward and emotional quandaries seem safer, and necessarily be deluded, and will leave important qualities of reality out of the account. So it doesn't make sense to me to make any decisions about we're going to do with ourselves from this position.
It would be a little more interesting of me to say "to alienate another, or yourself."
That topic is another reason I have, almost, started a blog. There is a lot to say about that.
I've been riled up by something like hearing someone talk, like I did today, about the fluctuating safety of swimming in Lake Ontario - various success stories in cleaning up the water and watershed, or in creating services you can phone up for up-to-date news on whether it's disgusting to immerse yourself in the lake and where. There are various things to say about that.
Or in my epic-feeling decisions about my own education and path there have been many passion-ridden things I've come close to starting a blog post to expound on. About early childhood education. How crucial it is to facilitate expression and communication, a learning environment, and an understanding of emotions as well as of reason. About how we have the resources to gift children with languages, with music, how important that is. . .
Food, compassion, water, emotions, communication...
Why the fuck is it so hard for a planet of intelligent and innovative creatures to put their heads together to actually perpetuate knowledge that is needed by individuals to survive and interact and create social structures in which we can actually, healthily cohabitate? In reality. Undeluded, engaged, impassioned, and creative.
That's what I want to know. Of course, I only want us to know about how hard it is and why so that we can accept reality in order to improve it.
In my own life, one year ago I began something that changed my life but didn't fix everything. Now, I stand evaluating the nature of education, education within systems, qualifications, experience, and conclude, again, that after a point the way to educate (and heal) the self is to stop ruminating and act, so I believe I will adopt education as my action. This seems to entail expression, participation, openness, and other things I have decided to be brave enough to espouse.
Anyway, there are some things I have to say. I'm not going to ever say it all, or say it all right, and if I don't get over that I'm just going to keep saying nothing. Some of it may interest you. Hopefully some of it will move you to respond and we can have some discussions and build some stuff.
In closing I have two quotations to think about:
"When were we ever sat down in grade school for compassion class???"
- a wise woman (http://www.facebook.com/note.php?note_id=411465214369)
and,
"Use your rage creatively!!"
- a g20 protestor
in love, joy, peace, rage and trepidatious self-expression,
RACHE
