Tag: compassion

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All You Need is Love. (No, really.)

So, I deconstructed my whole world view over the last fifteen years, no biggie. (Actually, very big biggie.) It has also taken me that long to put myself out there and try to make sure that all of the people I care about and that care about me, now know the real me. Old friends, new friends, childhood friends, family, all of them.

My truth (my experience and POV) is that organized religion serves to separate people and pit them against one another (much like political divisiveness.) Not God-bashing or even faith bashing, just religion bashing a little, I guess. Because it teaches an unreachable perfectionism. Because you only see people in terms of if they’re in or out and all you wanna do is get them IN at all costs, then feel better about yourself. It’s Us vs Them in its most basic form and its archaic.

It claims unconditional love while giving you lists of conditions. Saying “Love the sinner, not the sin” is simply going around calling everyone sinners. People are simply people. Real. With feelings. Capable of great love and good and also great evil and bad. Period. After coming out of the church, I have found more unconditional love than ever, and also hurting and broken people that have been chewed up and spit out and taught that they should both be perfect and also that they never will be and it screws people up. Perfectionism. Very conditional love. Jumping through hoops.

I believe religions were started thousands of years ago (and many have come and gone over the years) to try to rally people together with a common goal and to be able to sort of herd the sheep, control the masses. Teach them of a scary wrathful God and keep them in line. Otherwise, they cannot be trusted.

If you haven’t loved someone completely different from yourself, you will never get what love really is. We’ve got to stop dismissing people because they do not look the same, dress the same, have a different sexual orientation, see politics differently.

Have you ever sat with someone across the table and looked in their eyes and just listened? Not with an ear to tell them how it ought to be but just really tried to understand them? Someone totally different than you. Have you ever felt yourself loving them without trying to change them?  If not, then you’ve never truly grasped what love is.

To love is to meet someone exactly where they are, and to accept them there as well. Not try to talk them into being more like you, no, but just trying to give them the freedom to be themselves. To stand up for them against all comers, even if you don’t necessarily agree with everything they do. All humans should have basic dignity and respect. All. Not just the ones in Your group, Your race, Your tax bracket, (or whatever).

It’s a new and different world from 1,000 years ago, from fifty years ago, from ten. If we can’t grow along with the world, we’re screwed. It was once all about nationalism and Us vs Them and the world can never truly change under that, there will never be peace, (and of course religion teaches that peace is an unreachable goal, blah blah) because they don’t want anything to change. Those in control will always want to remain in control. Control your thinking, your actions, your very feelings. Which is why I am always banging on about reading, learning, growing, and thinking for yourself. If you’re the exact same person you were twenty years ago, you haven’t grown at all.

All we need is love, to quote a famous musician, and he was called a hippie and so am I but we’re not wrong. But first we must tear down the old things that do not know and understand real love. Sometimes those things are deep within ourselves.

Peace Out, peeps.

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Blogolicious Jan 2021 (life in the time of covid-19 and extremism)

So, yeah. the world has gone crazy again. I deactivated my Facebook account, again. (Once again I feel like a stranger in a strange land, like a lone voice crying out in the wilderness.) All those around me are crying “Havoc!” and letting loose the dogs of war.

As I see NBA players kneeling (now more fully understanding why they do this than I ever used to) and then read the vitriolic responses of the far right, I laugh, a mirthless chuckle. The extreme right does not care to understand, does not dare to open their hearts or minds to new thoughts or information. They don’t care about compassion and understanding but they do care if anyone rubs up against their narrow POV.

If a person hides themselves away refusing to look, read, learn, know anything outside of what they have always known, they will become more and more extremist. Any time you block yourself off from wisdom or knowledge or facts, and insist on only following a finite set of information, you set yourself up for cult-like extremist behavior. It’s bound to happen. History always repeats itself. Because the lessons that should have been learned have not been learned, not at all. When you know you’re right all the time and throw in a little religious fervor, look out. And some of them don’t even need the religion, they just need a cause to launch themselves behind, no matter how hateful it is.

Let’s say the number 5000 represented all the knowledge and wisdom and factual information available to us humans today. Some people will stop at 10. Some at twenty. Some at 4000. They will stop and say “I know it all! I know everything I need to know! Don’t talk to me about anything outside of this!” and “If you believe anything outside of THIS, not only are you wrong, but you’re stupid and evil, too.”

SMDH. Humans are so funny, but not in a laughable way, not today.

I’ve had enough of extremist view points. POVs that leave out compassion, talking with and discussing things calmly and logically with others, that refuse ever ever to (heaven forbid) listen to someone else’s POV. I see it every day. If you start to say something new to them, you can see the wall clang down as their minds and hearts close off. They have already made up their minds about everything til the end of time. They require no new information. It’s fear. It’s lack of maturity. It’s close-mindedness in the extreme.

There are some who follow me who are from a more, shall we say, conservative mindset. That’s fine. I get it. I’ve come out of some of that background myself. But many of you, even family members, do not know me, haven’t been around me for many years. I got to thinking that I know them quite well because they are the same in many ways as they have always been. But they do NOT know me. If you haven’t been around me in twenty years, I guarantee you do not know me. I’ve changed and grown a ton and been through a lot. I feel as though the universe itself said “I will bang your stubborn head on a brick wall until you open your mind and listen.” (The Universe apparently not being content to just let me be.)

Maybe it needs free thinkers, open-minded folks who are teachable enough and open-minded enough to grow along with all the changes that have occurred this century. Maybe people with open minds and hearts are in short supply so I was selected, I don’t know. I only know that I am a product of my experiences, (like most) though some seem to willingly shut themselves off from new experiences.

I’ve lived in a cave (metaphorically speaking) locked away from anything other than One POV, and there is certainly comfort in it. Soft, cozy. Warm.

The real world can be cold and harsh, but out there is where the fighting is, the true struggle. The struggle to be the best YOU you can become. This does not happen without ever having everything you believe in shaken and rattled, questioned, butted about, without something forcing you to face it all. (A new motto of mine is Question Everything, and that is so different than who I used to be.)

If you are someone who cares, I’ll share a bit about myself here (and goodness knows there are tons of blog posts here you can go back over, if you care to know me better, truly. Not just think you know me.)

I am not a Democrat or a Republican (I’m a registered Independent.) For the most part I do support police and military, first-responders, etc. I come from a military family and I will always support those who defend us with their lives. There have been times when certain officers have crossed a line and gone over to the bad place, and if you are a person of color, you know this. It breaks my heart.

Those on the far right might find themselves wanting to call me a snowflake liberal. Whatevs. If it helps you sleep better to put me in that box, by all means. Snowflakes are unique individuals, beautiful. I’ll take it. I DO care about people, I am a softy, no doubt. I love all people, want to see all people cared for and loved and supported, protected, and fed. If having a big heart and Big Love makes me a liberal, then call me that.

I am a writer with a fierce imagination. If I was a youngster in this day and age, they’d likely medicate me for my active mind and imagination. It’s a plate of spaghetti up there, I kid you not. I am ALWAYS thinking (which feeds into me not being able to sleep without some kind of sleep aid.)

I’m smart, but I’m a fish so don’t ask me to climb a tree. Don’t ask me about geometry but I am fascinated with physics and want to learn more. My “no likey maths” brain struggles with some of these things. I am certainly more of a right-brainer than a left-brainer (more creative, less mathy) but I am intelligent. I have an eye for color and design. I am highly organized at times, but can be more loosey-goosey when it comes to art. I have become a person who questions everything. I do have conspiracy theories but they may be different than most people’s.

Though most of my life people have treated me like a dumb blond, I’m actually a brunette. I’ve been underestimated and patted on the head hundreds of times, maybe thousands. But I am a woman, so there ya go. This is how they treat us.

On the whole, I am against abortion, however, I know people who have had them, I’ve sat with them and heard their stories and I don’t judge. Rape, incest, other real life problems factor in. For people who have never experienced crisis in their life, it’s easy to judge. I don’t do it. Also, the government shouldn’t be allowed to tell me what to do with my body.

White privilege is real. I never really understood it before I began to meet and know people from all walks of life, began to read about and hear their stories. Privilege is real. If you are not a person of color you cannot begin to imagine what life is like for one (neither can I). Many do not have the capacity to have empathy for anyone different from themselves. The color of your skin is an accident of birth, you had no choice in it. You’d better believe it.

I never ever look down my nose at the homeless, knowing that many of them had homes and families and so-called normal lives once, and then crisis hit and knocked them for a loop. It is not for me or for you to judge. (“There but for the grace of God,” etc., etc.) If someone told you once 20 years ago that they are all drunks and druggies and to be despised, time to re-think. Heaven forbid it should happen to you. Sometimes we learn lessons in the hardest of ways.

I believe firmly that this right-wing extremism thing is caused by people shutting themselves off from reality. They grow only so far, and then no more, refusing any and all new information. They read only one kind of book, watch only one station, surround themselves with people who are much the same as them. It’s cultish and dangerous, I’ve learned that well.

Now you know more about me. I am all heart, and that heart is broken these days. It is all just too, too much. I never thought I’d live to see such times.

It’s easy to just follow, to go along with what everyone else is doing, it really is. It’s hard to stop and say, “No more. I will think for myself. I will gather information and decide for myself.” It’s so hard, and at times very lonely. But for the first time ever, these last few years have taught me exactly who I am. I know exactly what I believe. (I know way less than I ever did in some senses… I no longer feel I know everything, that’s for sure. I am uncertain about a lot and that’s okay and as it should be. But I remain in a state of continued seeking, learning, and growing.) My mind and heart is open (if skeptical.)

I don’t know why I’m here, and I don’t want any more pat answers. But I am here and I am a writer, and so I will continue to do what I do as long as I can.

I love you, people. I really, really do. I hope you all, we all, remember our love and compassion, especially in such times.

Peace Out!

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True, Big Love

I just saw a true portrayal of love… it was a show about a woman who’s nine-year-old son had been murdered by a very broken, distraught teenager. Towards the end of the show, she is confronting the killer (many years later). He’s telling the mother what happened, crying, apologizing, and another man, a friend of the mother’s, shows up with a knife and starts towards the killer. He intends to take his life. The mother steps in front of the killer, the one who had killed her son. She steps up, steps in. 

She knows he deserves it, has it coming, but she still stands between the man with the knife and the one who killed her son.

It kinda broke me.

What a portrait of love, big love, forgiveness, sacrifice. She was willing to take the knife into her own body for the guilty one. So very Christ-like, so very full of true, actual love.

Though I am not much into religion in an organized way these days, I do very strongly believe in the principles of love, forgiveness, sacrifice. I believe in big love, all encompassing love. The kind of love that says, “No more. Enough is enough.”

In a time when compassion and empathy can literally save the lives of our fellow humans, (but many can’t be bothered to care), it is a powerful and compelling story.

This is the kind of love I seek to always have. Sacrificial, big love that says, it’s not just about me.

Something to ponder.

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Today’s quick thoughts

I’m not sure what it is or how it will manifest but something good happened today, something in my heart and soul. There was an almost audible “click,” the kind of thing that happens when the gray cells are getting stimulated, when some new bit of wisdom is busy making a home inside me somewhere… a kind of knowing. Wisdom. I think that was its name.

I can’t wait to see how it changes me.

Something is new and different. Something from above, a gift from the universe or the heavens. A new measure of strength? It’s amazing what can happen when you open your heart, mind, and soul to growth and change.

I know so many people, and I used to be one, that think there is this finite group of knowledge and they found it by age 40 and then they shut down and refuse to change, to see anything new. I don’t want to be that.

I won’t be, not ever, ever again.

The only person I will ever, ever change–is me.

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Why Teaching Empathy is Important

Over the last generation or two, we’ve witnessed a downturn in empathy and compassion being taught to our children. Here are my opinions and thoughts on why.

  1. More and more households have two working parents, leaving the largest part of child-rearing to strangers who have no emotional investment in our children. Many believe that both parents must work to get by, but often, (not always), it is not about getting by, but getting ahead. The desire for larger, nicer homes and cars has outweighed our desire to parent our kids.
  2. In some instances, a cycle of abuse and neglect has simply been continued on. If parents know no empathy, they can hardly be expected to teach it to their children.
  3. Faith is not popular these days. Many have found a foundation of moral and ethical, even empathetic and compassionate behavior to be taught in churches. Church attendance and even faith in a higher power has declined, which causes many to choose to have no moral foundation. While it is possible to be an atheist and have a moral compass, it is rarer than one might assume. Once certain lines are no longer drawn, and ethics are now situational, it is so much easier to wander down a path where anything goes, because it is believed there are few consequences to your behavior. If there is no God waiting to smack you down or send you to hell, then it is an easy leap to an “anything goes” lifestyle, for some. “Eat, drink, and be merry, for tomorrow we die,” becomes the mantra.
  4. When one grows up without constant love, acceptance, positive touch, and compassion, one learns to count only on themselves. This leads to a “me first” mentality and a lifestyle of selfish and boorish behavior. Bad behavior becomes the norm. Looking out for number one is the only way some know to live. This is my societal observation. It makes me sad, but I have yet to be proven that any of this is untrue.
  5. As my fifth and final point, I’ll just say, let’s love our children first; put their needs ahead of our own. Too often we have babies having babies and nobody fully understands what it takes to raise a child (well) and into adulthood. Our children aren’t asking to be born; sometimes they are brought into this world as an expression of love, sometimes by accident, or a lack of planning. Even those who are planned and wanted in the beginning face the possibility of a neglectful or abusive upbringing once the parents realize just what it takes to raise a child. If you are not able to (compassionately and lovingly) raise a child for a minimum of eighteen years, (and it does not always stop there), please take steps to make sure you are not going to conceive a child in the first place. They say Hell is for Children, and often that hell is right here on this earth, in a home where they should be loved and cared for. Have empathy, show empathy, teach empathy; this alone will heal our hurting world.