Thoughts
To quote Caitlin Johnstone editing and re-quoting that Tom guy, “Coronavirus is the earth’s vaccine. CAPITALISM is the virus.”
I was going to take this moment to do a whole thing, to compare substance to stuff, capitalism to true community, to describe the strength in pausing, being, feeling, to dive in and really speak my truth in the hopes that moving forward from this pandemic we might grow, evolve from lower frequencies in which our society has been [dys]functioning for decades. But instead, I’ve realized I just don’t have the energy nor the capacity right now to write a sermon. I’m just going to throw out some thoughts that have been percolating in my mind the past few months.
My biggest lesson in all this has been to slow down in or to become more receptive. And so that’s why I didn’t post a blog last month. I slowed down instead. Didn’t feel like producing anything or feeling the pressure of a deadline. Clearly, I still don’t. The freedom I’ve bestowed upon myself lately because of this is awesome. Highly recommend the paradigm shift.
Here are my thoughts…
Stuff
Includes items, clothes, goods, services, food, drinks, substances, activities, even some innovations, which are all fueled from a need to conquer, to DO, to be busy and fill up space and time… (as a species, many of these items do damage to our health and our planet because we use them as crutches, veils or addictions) (also Caitlin Johnstone, “We are convenience monsters!”)
My question is, can we choose to live lives of substance instead? To clear a way to our intuitions in order to sense what is good and what is a waste of time? How? How might we as individuals, communities, and as a species make better choices from places of deep peace, power and love? Is it possible? Fuck yes, I do it every day. It’s also a practice.
I saw a bottle cap in a pond, and wrote this…
Maybe we don’t need the factory worker who hates their job, but is afraid they will lose their benefits and hardly acceptable wage, rendering them unable to pay for their partner’s laundry list of medical bills in a healthcare system that doesn’t care. So that factory worker goes to make the bottle cap that’s put on top of the soda bottle, that’s transferred to the grocery store where it’s bought by a low income, marginalized, obese, blue collar family (struggling with all the other issues that sugar as a drug and food chemicals can create because they weren’t meant for human digestion in this way)... woohoo tangent. Where was I?
So, it’s bought by this family and then put in the hands of their child who has never been taught that nature rules, water is medicine, we are more than a number on a paycheck, and we are all infinite beings because we live in a vast world, far greater than our collective understanding and more deeply woven into Natural Law than our Netflix-laden minds can comprehend. This kid goes to the pond, drinks the soda, and throws the bottle cap in the water, none-the-wiser, adding to the pollution everywhere and once more stamping a seal of normalcy on something so grotesque. So from it’s initiation to its end, this plastic grey bottle cap has brought nothing but deterioration to our people, our time, our relationships, our bodies, and our planet... all so one guy at the top can hoard his gold so tightly in place of love, never knowing how free he could be if he softened his grip.
This is how I feel about capitalist enterprise, big business, the rich, the Edward Bernays’s of our time.
(Look him up. And watch Century of the Self while you’re at it.)
This is where I land in my thoughts over and over again. What do we need? What do we actually need?
And then, I can look into desires and things that bring joy, but when they start to replace actual basic human needs, water, food, shelter, love, community, creativity, livelihood, that’s where we get into trouble as a species.
Can we loosen up our time compulsion?
Loosen up our grip so that we allow more fluidity and creativity into our world instead of relying on time-tested rigidity and cold hard facts to guide us?
I’m not saying using this as an excuse to be late to group gatherings or every job interview, but wouldn’t it be nice if we didn’t judge or base our world off the ideas that “on-time=good” and “late=bad.” It’s all just social constructs anyway that we created to make us feel more in control, to fuel this modern world with more masculine energy, to give us a map for the things we can’t see, but could possibly feel. Most people in ancient times just followed the sun and moon to get an idea, clarity, and let the rest go.
But now we’ve built this world around “this show airing at this time”, and be there at 9am sharp or you’re fired, etc. Is there a happy medium by which our modern world can still keep turning while we simultaneously loosen our grip on every… fucking… second?
There are so many concepts involving time that I believe do a detriment to us as human beings. Such as…
Productivity, an idea incorporating time as a meter to measure how good something is based on the standards of selling to people to make money. Lame.
Deadlines, I’ve never had this thought until right now, but that word ALONE when dissected is so ominous. Are you kidding me? Don’t get me wrong, I want to have Christmas on Christmas, BUT does every single “productive” thing we do in this capitalist society have to be so strict that the societal norm is people living with serious chronic illnesses? Stress being the number one example...
Wouldn’t it be so nice to use the phrase “around this time” more often and mean it? To create space around time so that we stopped chronically squeezing time into a bottle and instead allow it to breathe? What if we allowed nature to talk to us more and let us know when the time was right? Think there’s any global deception behind that one, folks?
If time is something so revered, from the time in a day to a lifetime, wouldn’t we do well to respect it and let it be? To be guided BY it instead of trying desperately to conquer it?
Aho. And so it is.