This Is Our Job

These are the times we live in. Wherever you are (literally, and figuratively, as in, you are the only one with your perspective) is your Place.

Our global relationships with one another—not so healthy. When people on our planet are starving or killing one another: it is our problem. Every human being on earth regardless of tribe or location—participates in global transactions and the global psyche. I believe some serious shifts must to happen before healing can take place. It isn’t a matter of taking away guns or dropping off food or anything simple whatsoever—it’s a complete shift in functionality and belief systems that is what will change choices and actions. Away from division and toward unity, away from blame and into responsibility, away from greed and toward the common good, to totally over simplify.

We all participate in global activity and can all do something. So: What can we do? What are you going to do?

I’m going to write. I’m in my life with my perspective and having something to offer that is unique because of that. I’m an American female, and Americans are engaged in a war supposedly to protect us from terror, and we’re murdering each other.

I won’t go on and on (and on) about the terror or global deprivation America causes, and the deep festering psychological wounds that fuel it. You can all read newspapers and think things through and form your own opinions on both the good and bad impact of our country on the rest of the world and on ourselves. My point here is that I (we) have a choice to either ignore it and go about my daily life, because literally, it’s unaffected by 32 people being randomly murdered, or I can think of how I can use my calling to leave an imprint on history that hopefully—hopefully!—the souls of the future can learn from.

We pay a price for having asked nothing of history except its disappearance.

In the present, we can think, How can I honor this so that I ask more of it than its disappearance?

I know I have war poems inside, and I have something to say about domestic abuse, and I have something to say about extreme violence. I know that I’m not interested in giving romanticized fame and attention to tragedy or to terrorists. I know I also have something to say about those of us who work to for positive change and non-violent resolution.

My job as a contemporary writer is how to say that—knowing what to say and how to say it in a way that makes the appropriate impact. There are a lot of war poems out there, and few of them are successful. As for media writing, most of it undermines any movement we make toward a healthy mentality and positive change.

I believe withholding and withdrawing is a form of neglect, denial, punishment and control. To run one's life solely for his or her own benefit is withholding and withdrawing resources, and contributing to the problem.

Letting horrors of the world overrule the positive in one’s life is also wrong (and disempowering). I’ll honor and love the good. But I’m also going to make sure that I use my empowerment to do something other than enjoy my level of comfort, even though that’s not the easiest and most comfortable thing to do. That is the job of every person who has enough food and shelter and an education, I believe.

What do you have to say that no one else does? What are you going to contribute?

*img: Edge of the Orion Nebula