Sometning Needs To Change...3

Change is inevitable. Change is always inevitable. Change is always. I find it laughable that there are still people around, a lot of folks, who seem to think they are immune. No one is. Change is the driving organic process of existence. Who knew? A lot of us have all kinds of ways of insulating ourselves against change. We have favourite myths that we cling to, like a toddler's favourite blankie, to keep us all warm and safe and comfy-womfy and safe from uncomfortable and challenging truths. People who enjoy a certain economic security and social status are often the worst for clinging to illusions. If anyone spends any amount of time in the affluent West Side of Vancouver we will see on almost every block in some neighbourhoods these large, ugly and very angry, red, black and white lawn signs accusing the government of theft of their hard-earned savings for imposing a very modest surtax on properties valued at more than three million dollars. They cling so tightly and ferociously to their privilege and any hint of change is viewed as a lethal threat. Even if nothing is going to happen to even dent the quality of life to which they have come to feel entitled. People like to think they are immune to change. No one is. To think otherwise is tantamount to maintaining the Descartian nonsense that humans are somehow separate from nature. We are not separate, we are part of nature. Change is the driving force of nature and change, whether we like it or not is going to be our driving force. We are composed of organic matter, just like any other animal or plant or fungus. If you leave a banana in the fruit bowl for a few days, it is going to change, from almost green, to yellow, it becomes softer, sweeter, then little brown spots appear and it gradually turns brown, then black then it is rotten. Kind of like us when we stay in one place for too long. It isn't just the world around us that changes. Like it or not, we also are changing with our environment because we are not separate from our environment. We are part of our environment and liking it or not we also are the environment, just as we provide for others a sense of environment. We are all integrated, together, even if we prefer to think otherwise, and we are always impacting and being impacted, influencing and being influenced. I think that once we begin to recognize and accept this, even to embrace and celebrate that we are indeed part of the change that happens around us, then we can also harness the forces of change in ways that will also help advance us forward. People who have known privilege and status all their lives are often the least likely to know this or accept it. There is something about power and social position that damages the human soul, I think even more and worse than being marginalized and excluded. A lot is said and written about how dehumanizing poverty is, but what about having more than you need, and hording it? Selfishness shrinks and murders the soul. When the neo-liberal "reforms" were being implemented by our governments during the nineties, a lot of vulnerable people were hurt, and homelessness, extreme poverty and hunger have since become constants in dear, righteous and progressive Canada. There is a mistaken presumption that money and wealth sometimes makes us better. Well, they insulate us, but do they make us better people? I have been poor all my life, and I have also found that privation hasn't done one single thing to make me less the person that I am. I also try to share what I have, even if it's only a couple of loonies or an offer of food to a panhandler on the sidewalk. It is hard, walking by people so desperately poor every day, and feeling paralysed to be able to really help them. And I notice how others try to ignore them, averting the eyes, focusing more intently on their smartphones, anything to stay insulated. I know why this happens. There is something about this kind of vulnerability that so reveals the inner person, the raw bleeding humanity that many struggle to conceal from others, and most of us cannot face it, we cannot look the desperately poor in the eye because we don't want to see ourselves, reflected in them, we don't want to see ourselves as we really are. But all these social, political and environmental changes that we are living with are also changing us, and I fear that many of us are changing for the worse. If we can learn to love our vulnerability, to accept not only as something inevitable but also beautiful are weak human fragility, maybe this can help us be a little bit kinder to one another and to accept the changes we are living with, not as a threat, but as a divine tool for shaping and molding us.