Have you done a check in recently? Have you really sat with yourself and identified if this was the life you dreamed of when you were a kid? The one that was sold to you in the adolescent dramas and romantic romcom movies from yesteryear? Is this the world that you were sold? The reality that you always waited to grow into?
What is this world that we are living in? The one that was always laden with darkness just under the surface… the one where the radical nothingness of the day to day activities of life, are supported with death and destruction; is this what you really thought it was going to be?
With the constant worry about not losing a job, rent prices going up, oil futures decided months in advance for when you wont be able to afford gas, criminalizing the houseless who are begging for even a scrap of decency, shaming people for who they love if their gender doesn’t line up with your expectations. Or how about the fact that very few people really think the world an be better than:
Typical Day In Middle Class America -
Work a 40 hour a week job
Actually work closer to 60 hours
Always striving for that bonus or raise
The fun thing you are doing on the weekend between chores being shopping at Target or getting drunk with friends
Spending what little time you have not in the rat race, or chasing the high of capitalism, swiping on a social media app of your choice to fill the void
Sleeping fitfully
IS THIS THE LIFE YOU WANTED? IS THIS A GOOD LIFE?
Parks around the US being historically underfunded and sold to private corporations.
People dying at home and abroad for the shiny new piece of technology you are being sold as the ‘new thing of the future’. That was designed with Obsolescence built in; So that just in time for the next shiny new tech to be marketed to you, your current one is conveniently breaking.
Where you no longer wonder about the things you dreamed of being or becoming as a child, not merely because those dreams were beaten out of you by your parents telling you to ‘grow up’, or ‘that wont make money’, but because you became an adult in a world that actively SHOWED you, there was no place for dreams and creativity.
Where we scoff and laugh at people who make art because we don’t understand that art is what creates the very simple joys in the world that keeps it moving. Because we’ve been taught to not value the things that don’t make money.
Even when we currently aren’t making money for ourselves. Even when the money we are making… what little we are making, isn’t enough to run the fear of not making enough from our sweat slicked anxiety in the bedtime hours.
Is this the world that you were expecting? Where our babies are in danger when they go to schools? Where religion is a weapon and not a gift? Where war, genocide and slavery in other countries funded by our tax dollars, are sold to you as the only way that it can all work out?
Is this the world that you wanted? Where the wealthy get exponentially wealthier by using a pandemic to propel them into echelons of status that they will never be able to use in their life times (or a hundred of their lifetimes)? The type of trade that resulted in millions of people continuing to die, for a disease that could’ve been eradicated, so that pharma could make money on a new vaccine that would now need to be required forever… so that some one somewhere could get a new car or a new house or a new boat or a new island…
Is this the world that you were sold? As a child reading about liberation, and life, and love? Where anything you do, if it doesn’t make money for one of 10 brands, is seen as little more than a hobby to be shamed and undervalued? Where anything you do that might even be a hint at bringing you joy, is suddenly stripped from you if you can’t find a way to pay your skyrocketing rent? Where even if you own a home, the cost of interest is prohibitive to the point of laughable. Where even when you can finally find something stable enough to afford housing, you are now struck with the worry of needing a second job just so that you can afford the bills and the ‘fun’ of life?
Is this the world that you grew up in? Where summers are even more excruciating, winters are becoming unpredictable, spring is more allergic, and fall is almost nonexistent? Where tornados are rampant in seasons they weren’t before, and hurricanes more destructive than they’ve ever been? Where forrest fires are becomes state wide fires, and where water shortages are common?
Where even if you are in a major city, more often than not it is likely still wise to boil you water prior to drinking to try and get the contaminates that you can taste from it, so that it is still drinkable…
Is this America great? Is this America worth saving? Is this world something that you want to continue to prop up?
If the systems that got us here are the ones they are telling you we must continue to partake in… isn’t it worth questioning, and pushing back, and saying…
No.
This isn’t the America that I was sold, the one that I was shown, the one that I believed in.
And I refuse to continue the cycles of violence and abuse and manipulation to allow myself or anyone else the risk of what we are going to continue becoming.
We are the empire. And empires can fall.
So I ask you… is this what you wanted? And… if the answer, even however small, is no… then what do you want? AND WHAT are you going to do, to make the world even marginally better so that you might have what you want?
And even if… perhaps, you can’t have that… what are you going to do, to make it so that others… who come long after you, have a better world, where they can make their dreams into a reality?
Let’s plant some seeds for trees we may not know the shade of.
xo