Ostriches

There are some days I notice themes. Recently I've become more aware of avoidance, in myself and the world around me, and I've wondered about it, why I am noticing it now and to what end.

I've never been one for current affairs. I don't read the paper, watch the TV news and try to avoid the parts of "The Current" on CBC that involve the horrors and atrocities that we humans inflict upon each other and this planet. And let's be honest, there's a lot of very ugly train wrecks happening out in the world these days. I've always told myself that I am not so much burying my head in the sand as much as it feels unnecessary and counter-productive to bask in the well-known awfulness that makes up a generous aspect of human nature. It bums me out and burns me out, darkens my mood, confuses my energy rather than clarifies it. I feel like I do a better job at life knowing about the existence of the many dark truths of the world from a distance, although I get that that is a luxury. The other night however I did listen, a rare tuning in to an evening radio current events show.

I was driving through the beautiful and incessant rain that has been both pummelling and nourishing this coast for the past month or so. On my way to an evening class. I feel so lucky to live here on this island, despite the threat of being carried away by a tsunami or swallowed up in an earthquake, I am privileged to have the freedom, comfort and abundance that I am afforded in my life. My class, race, the many lucky happenstances of my birth (all except my gender culturally speaking) have made my life materially and and in many other ways easy. Although I want for certain things sometimes, my very existence is not threatened on a daily basis. I am not struggling to survive in any way, and in some ways I am thriving.

As I drove through the rain and listened to a few of the stories - tales of violence, destruction and incredible cruelty I allowed it to sink in. Hospitals - maternity wards - built underground in war zones, being systematically targeted and  destroyed. Babies, labouring mothers, all terrorized over the course of days and weeks and incinerated in a moments' bomb blast.   This just one of several stories about war, pipelines and human rights offences. Just me and the radio and the dog in the back, as I drove through the verdant fields in tears, listening to the crackling voice of some soul living in that war zone, sounding so matter of fact, so possessing of dignity and grace and resignation. Just living the experience, of being in direct and visceral contact with the evil in the world and telling his story.
Past some of the self-protective filters I have, I let myself feel the discomfort of it, which includes an awareness of my culpability as a human being.

I reflected that while not all bad, some of my avoidance of these types of programs is about the shame and helplessness I feel at not being able to do anything substantial to make it better. I often feel, underneath it all, ashamed of my life of privilege and abundance and my tendency to sometimes ruminate on the petty heartbreaks of my small life. My colonial heritage troubles me, and the way it plays out in my way of being in the world. I feel shame at my tendency to avoid facing the ever-present difficulties that so many people deal with daily and my fixations on 'living into what is beautiful' which though I see has value, seems to be an insufficient contribution in this world of suffering and injustice.

I don't usually listen to the news not because I am trying to will it out of existence, but because it pollutes my consciousness, makes me feel small and ineffective. Useless. When I pause long enough to consider all the unfathomable losses and horrors brought about by the human predilection for inhumane acts I am overwhelmed by it.

I wonder at that word - inhumane, because I understand that without us humans there would be no inhumanity. And yet we push it away from ourselves, labelling deeds and actions that are in any way destructive using a word that overtly suggests it is the opposite of us. Not human. And yet it is exactly and wholly human to be violent, to kill each other, as well as destroy, plunder, or cripple the the infinite biotic and abiotic beings that are also of this world. Ironically when I looked up synonyms of the word "inhuman" one of them was 'wolfish', the irony and inaccuracy of which is unbearable to me.

I sometimes push things away that threaten my sense of my own essential goodness  - things that I do, think or say feel less compassionate, less loving, less worthy. We all like to believe in this idea - that we are essentially and innately good. But sometimes we don't even see the messes we make, so habituated are we to the carelessness of the day to day acts of modern living. I know I don't, in part because it's hard to extract my own tenuous sense of self from the ways where I have been less good, less fair or grounded. All the dark thoughts and neglectful ways I have of being in the world. All the places where I am out of integrity.

 I am wondering whether that is really the great feat in this life. To take it all - encompass and take responsibility for our own light and darkness and know it to be part of our wholeness. There is darkness wherever there is light. To use shame simply as a landmark to remind us to continually check the compass of integrity and compassion. To feel deeply but not be overcome by it. To see the human casualties, and mountainsides being carved and blasted to rubble for the sake of modernity; to hear the resounding silence of lost species are falling under the hands of our own unforgivable apathy and insatiable material desires. Maybe we need to be touched by things enough to see what needs to change. To work through and overcome our shame as best we can because I am almost certain that sitting in shame and guilt, while useful indicators, only really lead to more wrong-doing and wrong-thinking. And to be able to accept that I am part of the problem and find something, even something small that I can actually do.




* After I wrote this I saw this post: https://www.facebook.com/ngc.tw/videos/10156270456689170/