Apparently I’m on a mission to save the world.  Uh oh, knight in shining armor complex strikes (again).   I guess the reason behind it is that my level of awareness is increasing in leaps and bounds, and in order to share it with you, I have to put down the most important pieces as quickly as they are coming to me– so that you can at least have some sort of reference to figure out where the hell I’m coming from.

In turn, those bits and pieces turn out to be my way of identifying what’s going wrong.   And as much as I don’t want to focus on what’s wrong (for lack of desire for more of what’s wrong), I still believe that you must acknowledge that things are going wrong in order to identify the solutions.   I’m not saying that I have all of the solutions– or any of them for that matter, but I do believe that there ARE solutions, and that we as a collective whole, are perfectly capable of putting our minds together and not only defining the solutions, but creating a workable game plan in order to begin BEing the solution.

“If you’re not part of the solution, you’re part of the problem.”  I don’t know if someone actually said this, or if it’s just cliche at this point.  I just know that in this situation, it’s 119% true.  I think the major problem is that we as a culture are asleep.  I believe that we need to wake up and start cleaning up our messes.  And boy, do we have a shitload of mess to address.

Here is a laundry list:

• We’re fucking up the ecosystem with pollution, destruction, and overpopulation.
• Our justice systems are inadequate and unfair.
• We are warmongers and litigious.
• We worship the dollar, which is worthless.

Thankfully, things are about to change.  Inevitably, things WILL change whether those still asleep care about/realize it or not.  Things are changing and there are droves of us all waking up at once.  This is not by accident, and I don’t know if it’s due to some perfect planetary alignment, if God is whispering in our ears, or if our sleeping drugs are finally wearing off.  There are people yawning, stretching and saying, “Oh fuck, what have we done all this time?”

So, don your cleaning gloves, we’re about to experience one helluva tidal wave.

Contrary to popular belief, finding someone to blame isn’t going to solve the problems.  Yes, it’s fun and rewarding and gratifying to put this on someone else’s shoulders.  Perhaps it’s the government’s fault, their people are corrupt and there are hidden ulterior agendas.  Perhaps it’s the money-hungry pharmaceuticals and oil companies, because being rich is more rewarding than doing things the right way.  Perhaps it’s us fat, gluttonous, lazy Americans who are comfortable turning a blind eye in the farce of freedom.  It ultimately doesn’t matter WHOSE fault it is, we are all ultimately doing this.  Every one of us is responsible– either for sins of commission or sins of omission.  Those of us who were asleep all this time are at fault because we slept through it all, and those of us who were awake this whole time didn’t get to teaching others soon enough.  We all have to own this.  After all, we’re all in this together, and if we don’t all work together, well, it affects the ability for us to continue to survive on this planet together.  No planet = no us.

Now that we’re all charged with fault, we all must work together to fix it.

To view the entirety of our troubles is to become overwhelmed with despair.  As individuals, we certainly can’t fix everything on our own.  However, in believing that there’s at least some tiny smidgen of good within each of us, I believe that every single one of us has some gift to offer, some “penance” which we can lovingly share in order to make the world a better, sustainable place to live.

What is your own gift?  Much of what we have to offer falls into one of three categories: Teaching, Willingness to Learn, and Action.   If you know what you’re doing in your recycling program, it is NOW your responsibility to teach the rest of it the benefits and ease with which we can reduce the amounts of waste we’re putting into our landfills, atmosphere, and oceans.  If you know how to teach people to take responsibility for their actions, then it is NOW your responsibility to teach others how to do the same.   If you know anything that will help the rest of us, you MUST NOW teach us.   If you feel like you don’t know how to do any thing that will help with the clean up, it is NOW your responsibility to demonstrate a Willingness to Learn.  It’s now your responsibility to quit allowing yourself to be distracted by the un-valuable and set forward your sights to learn how to make things better.  If you have the gift of Action, NOW is the time to begin doing the things that will make it better.  You are the demonstrators, showing the rest of us that there’s nothing frightening about doing what’s necessary to fix the problems.

Combined, these three types of people, the Teaching, the Willing to Learn, and the Actors, are going to be what helps us collaborate our forces and fix what we’ve done.

Personally, I believe I fall into the Willingness to Learn category.  I teeter back and forth between Teacher and Student regularly, this is the cycle of my experience.  I love to write, and so in many ways, I compile the things I’ve learned in this lifetime into and easy to read (or not) formula so that you, too, can see what I’ve learned.   In that capacity, I am also a teacher.   However, I realize that there is much to learn from this lifetime, and there is much I will learn– and have no idea about yet.  The area I struggle with most is the Action area.   In my own right, I fear the change.  I fear the cost.   I fear the dollar and the people who have so much of it yet want to take more of it from me.  I fear the change in lifestyle, and have become utterly comfortable with my own gluttony.  I suppose this is why the awakening has been such a blind-sided experience.  I don’t necessarily want to live with any more awareness than I absolutely have to in order to survive.  At the same time, this is not an option for me.  I keep learning more and more about what sort of mess we’re in and I recognize my role in what’s been done so far.  I recognize that I can no longer turn a blind eye because I’m not BLIND.  At least not as much any more.  So, I must Learn.  And in turn, I’m going to have to Act, as much as that seems like such a pain for me to do.

Saving the world isn’t going to be easy…  and I’m certainly not going to do it alone.  I’m not your leader, I’m just one of the reporters.  Now it’s your turn to yawn and stretch and figure out what it is that YOU’RE able to do.  What’s your gift?

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