BE UNIQUE
Why I’m Sad
And I’m not going to meditate it away.
I walked my dog home from my mother’s place the other night. It had just turned dark here in Santa Monica, about 9 pm. I saw people dining in restaurants for the first time in a few months. I felt the hum of life returning to the street. First, the lockdown, then the riots, had brought the silence of fearful residents and deserted streets. But now boarded windows were opening, and I actually passed a few people on the sidewalk. Perhaps it was this sliver of normalcy that made me realize how much of life I’ve missed. And with that glimpse, for the first time since the pandemic hit, I realized how sad I was.
I know the more popular articles in most publications, are all about how NOT to be sad. How mindfulness will heal our blues. How to turn stress into positivity. How yoga, or meditation, or communication will soothe our soul. This is not one of those.
It feels like the world has lost its footing. I’m not talking about just the virus. I’m talking about my country. How did we end up a country so utterly at war with itself? I’m not saying we shouldn’t be, given the state we are in, we should, and need, to be fighting for so many things. But how did we end up in this sorry state?
How did we end up with people who have such little regard for human life they can look elsewhere while they extinguish life with a knee? How does someone tasked with protecting the public good, end up murdering a handcuffed, prone, defenseless human? How does one shoot a running man in the back?
Why does the 24/7 news cycle feel so assaulting to basic human decency? Every minute filled with tales of racism, murder, violence, domestic and international terrorism, religious intolerance, and rampant injustice.
From one horror to the next, the talking heads inform us of our atrocities.
Where is empathy in our society? Or in our government?
How did we end up with people running our country, creating our laws, and then enforcing those laws, who clearly do not have the capacity for empathy? What happened to these people along the way that caused them to lose the capacity to put themselves in someone else’s shoes and feel that other person’s suffering or their need?
What is this global human need to subjugate others to our will? To ostracize and violate others based on race, sex or beliefs? Is it some sick Darwinian trait? Is subjugating another to your will some primal survival instinct simply more present in some people than others? Why else is it so universally present in all cultures, races and religions? As far as I can tell it has been around from the genesis of man. So is it actually nurture? Or is it nature? More dormant in some and alive in others?
How is it not just common sense for every single one of us to protect the resources of our planet that feed us and keep us alive? The air. The water. The soil. The animals.
Why is ivory or rhino horn so important to some that extinction of the species is not a deterrent? Or the profit margin of eggs, meat or milk so critical that chickens, pigs, and cattle, live in putrid inhumane conditions? Why have we created vast miles of floating plastic garbage in our oceans? The list is endless.
While slowly killing ourselves on one end, we depend on technology and medicine to save us on the other.
We treat each other, our world, and our earth with such indignity.
In all that we do every day to keep the ship afloat, to drive forward, to progress, to earn, to survive, I realized I hadn’t really let myself feel deeply emotional about our situation. To allow myself the deep sadness that it engenders. Well, it’s probably more honest to say that my sadness had been covered with too much anger. Anger at a country and world that seems to be living in the Upside Down.
Despite its profound history of racism, violence and injustice, this country was founded on the pursuit of higher ideals by those that fled persecution in their homelands. Until very recently, our trend, however glacial, has been towards the good.
So it is a blessing to see us fighting again, for Black Lives and for justice and for dignity. This is the defining moment of a generation, and it does feel like a pilot light of hope has finally caught some oxygen.
America is led by a petulant child and his sycophants who assault our very decency on a daily basis. We are led by liars and criminals who seem to relish profiting off the subjugation of others. “Leaders” who have lost their capacity for empathy, the most important element of any democratic government. We witness domestic atrocities of violence, humiliation and indignity hourly.
