Healing Trauma: Perspectives And Attitudes 15

I am what could be called an eternal optimist. I believe that we will work it all out. I believe that we will get to a better place in our lives and in our world. I believe in happy endings. I also believe that I have an invisible friend named Jesus. I actually do believe this, and some of you, Gentle Reader, might be already shaking your heads in despair, or switching onto Facebook, or googling Richard Dawkins! But I hope against all hope. It is a matter of being patient. It is a matter of enduring. It is a matter of refusing to abandon all hope, regardless of all circumstances and evidences to the contrary. Despite the Great Deplorable in the Oval Office. Despite Facebook, Twitter, and the endless army of dolts, doofuses, dorks, douchebags and dumbasses all stepping in dog shit and getting hit by cars (natural selection, anyone?) while texting their way to a likely early grave along the crowded and busy city sidewalks of life. I still have hope. Despite the two point six million paper coffee cups that end up in the landfill here in the City of Vancouver every WEEK. Despite all the plastic bags I see groceries filling up in the supermarket because the vast majority of shoppers simply don't care enough to bring cloth reusable bags. Despite the stubborn lazy and entitled idiots who refuse to leave their cars at home, or simply get rid of them. Despite those same idiots adding every day to the carbon emissions that are poisoning our atmosphere and contributing to global warming. Despite the overwhelming population of stubborn carnivores who would rather enjoy their steak than consider the harm that raising animals for meat is having on the environment. Despite the raging fires, floods, hurricanes and rising sea levels that are but the beginning of sorrows as we begin to face the music and pay the piper. What's wrong with us? Well, almost everything. We are the bastard children of Prometheus, the Greek Titan god who against the judgment of Zeus gave humans the gift of fire. We are the bastard descendants of the Garden of Eden, feasting on the forbidden fruit of the knowledge of good and evil when we were too innocent and too immature to be able to live with the consequence of our acquired god-like brilliance. And we have carried our arrogance and hubris throughout our sad and troubled history, each generation adding to the trauma and sorrows brought on by its antecedent, our ancestors, and now us, their children tracking our bloodied footprints across the surface of our wounded and troubled earth. Oh, but nobody's perfect. How many times do we have to hear, much less give voice to, that lamest and most puerile of human excuses for human inaction? Of course we're flawed. Of course we are prone to error. Of course we are all almost incredibly and incurably stupid, slow learners, selfish and self-destructive dunderheads. So instead of trying harder, instead of getting off the couch, butting out, getting educated, informed and finding out what we can do to help heal ourselves, our humanity and this planet, instead of getting off Facebook and porn sites, instead of rising to the challenge of being even marginally better people, most of us do nothing. Or...maybe it's a little more complicated. When we consider the global and market forces at work, and how they manipulate, brainwash and enslave us, of how smartphones have been intentionally engineered to trigger dopamine enhanced addictive behaviour, of how subtly we are induced to spend money and buy garbage we don't need, of how our education and diminished culture facilitates ethically challenged behaviour that has become alarmingly collective. If we are going to change then we have to empower ourselves. In order to empower ourselves we need to educate ourselves. This means time, effort and attention. We are producing one of the most attention deficit generations in our history, thanks to their enslavement to technology, a technology governed by market forces with absolutely no ethical investment in our humanity and only a fiscal investment in maintaining their bottom line and fattening their profit margins. At our expense. It is the responsibility of those of us who know better, those of us who are already aware of the issues to walk our talk, to put our values into motion and to educate others, despite the indifference, despite the narcissistic inaction, despite the pushback. I was telling a friend yesterday that when I hit fifty, I was suddenly confronted with the reality of my impending mortality. I am in my sixties now. Even if I live another forty years or longer (and just to spite all of you, I might last even longer than that!) Every single day now I am reminded that I have one day less on this planet, and that eventually I too am going to die. Every day I try to decide to the best of my ability to be the best person I could possibly be, despite my limitations, my weaknesses and flaws, despite my many chronic imperfections. This is what motivates me to keep going, to get cracking and to talk to people, to try to treat others with kindness, to do what I can to live and speak in a way that will inspire others and will bring out their best selves, to somehow influence myself and others to do what we can, even in the tiniest steps, to slow this process of collective annihilation, and maybe even to reverse it. This is why I write this damn blog. And now I am talking to you, Gentle Reader: Stop making excuses and get off your ass!