EVERYTHING WE ARE GOING THROUGH WAS PREDICTABLE.
We have eyes to see, so we can navigate safely, you see an obstacle in your path when walking, well you avoid it.
We have ears to hear, and alert us to whatever noise we hear, if it’s not normal, example being at home relaxing in your bedroom doing whatever, and hearing a loud noise away in the Livingroom when you know you are alone.
We smell a heavy butane odor, and look for a leak, we open windows, and above all we do not light a match.
We eat something, and we notice it taste funny, we stop eating, and get rid of whatever we had in our mouth and spit it out.
Well, you get what I am saying, our senses protect us from danger, but how come when we see, and hear everyday bad news, about injustice, wars, violence, hate, prejudice, racism, xenophobia, we pay little attention, we switch the news and look for something else so we can forget all problems and enjoy our peace, an tranquility?
We have the luxury to do so, when the fire its far away, and not on our next door neighbor.
Well not today, the fire is here at home…
And its about time for ourselves to be involve, and try to do our best, to be on the side of the common good.
Years ago remember having many conversations about the topic of future trouble in America, simply put; because our lack of awareness to realize we live in a small World today, and what it happens in another Continent, far away will also affect us, one way or another, at a later date, as Covid-19 did.
Please do not care to hear arguments for who did this, or who did not, neither to hear political mumble, from right, or left. it’s not about partisanship, but to be honest and take the side of the one in need, the downtrodden, the oppressed, the weak, in other words be a person of heart, peace, and kindness, not about hate, and violence.
Be an advocate for the resolution of conflict, not an instigator of problems, we have seeing a lot of that, and we want peace, and love towards each other.
“Blessed are the poor in spirit, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven.
Blessed are those who mourn, for they will be comforted.
Blessed are the meek, for they will inherit the earth.
Blessed are those who hunger and thirst for righteousness, for they will be filled.
Blessed are the merciful, for they will be shown mercy.
Blessed are the pure in heart, for they will see God.
Blessed are the peacemakers, for they will be called sons of God.
Blessed are those who are persecuted because of righteousness, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven.
Blessed are you when people insult you, persecute you and falsely say all kinds of evil against you because of me.” Mathew 5: 3-11.
Now it’s a time for Heart, be all united by it.
Kone, Krusos, Kronos 
We live in very trying times of change. We are aware of way out of proportion to our ability to influence. All the more reason to be kind to ourselves and others, live simply and responsibly.
Sadly so, as I mention on the post for years I have talked to friends about what was coming, but of course our ability to to influence was negligible, to say the least, everything happens for a reason, we heard the whistle of the train coming near, and still some of us rush to beat the train, then of course accidents happen.
Even if the events of these days were no accidents, we live, and try to forget we will have an end to this life, just like Hamlet:
“To sleep, perchance to dream—ay, there’s the rub, for in that sleep of death what dreams may come when we have shuffled off this mortal coil, must give us pause. …”
Yes, kindness, goodness of heart is the answer.
Thank you for your nice comment. 🙂
Amen
Thank you for your comment, my friend. 🙂
I have the feeling that in my world people in general do not suffer from hunger because there isn’t any food, but of lack of friends or neighbours ! Maybe in this sense too, we have to wake up and change our behaviour! Many thanks for your thoughts. Martina
The solution to our problems its not hate, and war, but simply common sense, and kindness of heart, with a willingness to end suffering for those in need.
Thank you Martina, something of good may come out of all these problems, even if only a heart of flesh as in Ezekiel 36:26
Unfortunately, I am not very positive that the human being will ever learn anything, in the long run, of all the tragedies he has gone through!
I have recently listened to a report about the situation of the children in Mexico and I thought of you!
Well, yes we Human beings are always in need to be better, and since we are all different and live in many diverse circumstances , and we all need education, money, and good values to confront the challenge of life on every part of the Globe, these are not easy things for many, due to multiple factors, some outside the control of the people who suffer them, or for the people to understand them, who just read , or look at the problems from outside.
In Mexico there’s many problems and the reason I am writing to you in English its because as a man over thirty years of age, I was forced to leave the country searching for a better future during the mid eighties.
But also I am back on my country, because simply put, now that I am retired, will not be able to afford to live in the US, in the city where I live there are also thousands of American citizens living here, I know a few and we talk as friends, and all over Mexico, in fact officially there are a million an a half living in Mexico, some they go back and forth and we call them winter birds, because they only show up on winter, not all live here for economic reasons, but because they like to live here.
And with the upheaval the US is going through, very likely more will come.
And also from many other countries, one surprise I found when coming back is finding people from all over the World here, talk about Globalization.
And online you find videos of Mexican people living all around the World as well.
But it doesn’t mean we do not have many problems also in Mexico.
Bottom line, to be Human is to have needs, and problems, to keep us busy.
Hope your problems not to be a heavy burden, Martina. 🙂
Well, people in Ticino, where to we have emigrated about 5o years ago, was a very poor region and they often had to emigrate, also to America, in order to escape famine! It seems that emigration is something that can’t be stopped, because of the hope to find a better life.
We have many “winter birds” too, from the Swiss German part, who certainly brought economic improvement, but according to me, also a lot of greed and distruction of nature. So it is maybe with everything in life that one has to try not to loose the balance.
I very much like your second but last sentence:)
:):):)
Not hate. Not war. COMMON SENSE A time to have heart!!!!
Indeed words to live by. Words to get us back into the light.
Thank you Don, certainly, good will, and peaceful resolutions for any conflict, and for that we need a good heart. 🙂
I agree that foresight and planning for the future is now of utmost importance, because we are at the end of a long prosperity cycle. Now is the time to tighten belts, get rid of all debts asap (as far as possible) and avoid all types of conflict to reduce the tensions as far as possible. (& If at all possible, get out of the big cities.. )
I see this period as a necessary cleansing process, after such a lopsided reign of ignorance, quantity, and materialism over values, like virtue, truth, justice, wisdom, and peace.
Thank you for your comment Jean-Jacques. 🙂
Very good points and a good approach to have Mr Anaya. I too believe it’s best to take a pragmatic approach towards all that is happening. It’s a cycle and it too will pass 🙂
If only the world would live by the Sermon on the Mount … Instigation, lies and the constant blame-game just fan the flames.
It’s the labor of Giants, and Heroes to live, and die by their Ideals, unfortunately the only way to change for a better future.
There’s no shortcuts, and the reason we venerate those whose acts, match their truthful words.
Thank you Selina for your comment. 🙂
Un post ricco di riflessioni che più che mai oggi diventano
Riflessioni ti diventano indispensabili per costruire una Alleanza più umana e rispettosa dei bisogni dell’altro ben oltre il nostro giardino.
Shera
Grazie per le tue osservazioni e commenti, carissima Sherazade. 🙂
Thank you for sharing this perspective same has been explained in the Bhagvad Geeta too
Stay wealthy healthy safe and happy
Thank you for your comment Kanika. 🙂
🙏
As I assumed, an uplifting and optimistic post. I think I’ve come full circle. I used to think love and kindness was all that mattered. Then I became hardened against that thought and cynical, seeing nothing really(that I could perceive) resulting from believing in those basic principles. But now it’s all I think about and all I crave. The long time away from those beliefs was a classic “distance makes the heart grow fonder.” But also I understand,in a deeper way than my youth, how like food for the soul it is, to live in love and attempt to share/spread kindness whenever possible. Which isn’t easy to do 24/7! And I fail a lot. But I feel like the rock has been overturned and whatever doesn’t like the light will crawl away and hide, and big awareness seems to have gripped the whole world about many various things with an energy that persists and hopefully will continue on…..
Many thanks!
🙂 🙂 🙂
Well, I am passionately on the side of justice, and I may seem political to some, because of it, but bottom line I want peace, and harmony, and prosperity to all people, and that cannot be achieved meanwhile exist grievances, because injustice, oppression, violence, and hate.
Bottom line, big problems require big solutions, and the addressing of injustice, to obtain peace, and to deaf ears, louder voices, and actions, and never give up, period.
Thank you for your great comment, we appreciate it. 🙂
Your words are spot on. I can’t understand why anyone would think twice about saving our planet. What is there to think about? It’s the future of the human species as such and for the planet as we have come to know it.
Yes Otto, a teacher of mine used to say: “Actions are love, on the other hand, thinking and talking, well…it’s easy to do, but nothing its done.”
Amen, my friend, amen.
Thank you for your comment. 🙂
My dad, having been a child in nationalist-Imperial Japan, was of the opinion that societies are “living things” in the sense that they maintain information and organize themselves, utilize energy, compete for resources, and evolve by natural-selection. Individuals, consequently, can become swept along in their bodies, like individual cells in a complex organism. The problem for humans is that as individuals we have characteristic motives that don’t necessarily correspond with those of a society.
Humans can feel pain and suffering, understand compassion, value love. Societies cannot. Their motives are more as those of an animal instinctively pursuing resources while responding to threats. Nationalism, fascism, communism, socialism, capitalism… these all describe variations of the same theme, that some system supersedes the individual. The systems’ appeals to individuals’ actions are the cultural hormones of fear and loneliness… that the organization of the society will provide sustenance and protection while giving each person some sense of group identity. Our own instincts are like cognitive hormone receptors for those social equivalents of neurotransmitters. And they’re powerful.
If we’re not aware of them as individuals, they lead to everything from pointless acquisition and competition to following mere symbols into warfares between cultures. And anything can be turned into an arbitrary symbol, from an acronym or an aphorism to words, actions, occurrences, or material objects. Moreover, natural selection has left humans with instinctive drives for social contrivances such as “fairness” and “justice”, which further muddle our objectivity.
Finding that balance between honoring individual needs and desires to the greatest extent possible while empowering the useful aspects of a greater culture perhaps requires more individual awareness than humans currently possess. Honoring every individual desire while also enjoying the benefits of social order is simply an impossibility. Personal responsibility and individually ethical engagement with whatever social system one inhabits will be a requirement for anything to work. But at a bare minimum, that would imply a closed society of like-minded people. And we humans are messy creatures.
My dad was a committed pacifist and humanist who strived to both contribute more to society than he consumed, and to show compassion and love for others as an individual. But he was also a realist in that he didn’t expect it to make much difference in the greater social order as a whole. That’s simply driven by something more instinctive, and in response to the kinds of pressures that whole civilizations experience. And that’s also the way most humans operate, whether or not we admit it to ourselves.
I totally agree with you, and with your father’s feelings, we as individuals are swept by the tidal currents of the age, and society, we live in.
But also believe as you said:
“Finding that balance between honoring individual needs and desires to the greatest extent possible while empowering the useful aspects of a greater culture perhaps requires more individual awareness than humans currently possess.”
When I was a child, was privileged to grow with many movie theaters at our relative small town, about 60,000 people, we had seven of them and they worked seven days a week, and they changed movies, three times a week from Monday to Thursday, you could see three different pictures for your single ticket, from Friday to Sunday two new releases, at each theater.
As a child I was at the theater four, or five days a week, even during school days, after class some of us would end at the movie theater after school, and the price of the tickets was a bargain, and as student we used to get half price tickets during Monday to Thursday.
And what was best we enjoyed all kinds of foreign movies, and probably saw hundreds of movies at the time, today ironically I hardly watch a movie.
But through them I got some sort of education, that expanded my horizons, and wake up in me a thirst for knowing, and took away my provincialism, not for a single moment ever thought my old home town will be the place where I will stay and live forever.
Well out of all those movies I remember a movie, made possibly in the early sixties, I do not even remember the name, but I do remember the story. A movie about Buddha.
In one vignette, there was this poor old lady, who wanted to light a candle, and deposited at the temple but she was really broke, but she struggle to no end to be able to buy the most humble candle of all, and then she went to the temple and with the upmost devotion she put it between the hundreds of fancy candles, hers the most humble of all.
Then Mara showed up and started unleashing a wind that one by one extinguished all lights except her candle, Mara tried hard to blow out the single humble candle but couldn’t do it.
After it gave up, a monk came out and with that single candle, he lighted all the others.
I could not be more than eleven, or twelve years old when I saw that movie, but I understood the message.
Personally I agree with you, believe no one can save the world, but we can all do some good while we’re here.
Even as small, and humble as the old lady candle.
Thank you for your comment we certainly appreciate it. 🙂
This is a magnificent response. Thank you!
The story that probably best exemplifies my upbringing is that of the old man walking along the shoreline during the receding tide, tossing starfish that had washed up onto the beach during the night back into the sea. A young man, seeing this, asked the old man why he bothered when it made no difference since the starfish would simply be washed ashore with the next rising tide? The old man responded as he tossed another starfish into the sea, “It just made a difference that one.”
Good cheer to you!
I agree, a small act of compassion it’s always helpful to the receiving end.
Great anecdote by the way. 🙂
Very well said!
Thank you, Leif. 🙂
Brilliantly and beautifully written.
Thank you Kally, we appreciate it. 🙂
Climate change was predictable, but look how it always ends with nothing, whatever we try to do.
It’s too bad there are these insanely huge conglomerates and big money can just concentrate and the ones who make decisions aren’t always even visible as opposed to people who you see on the news or on social media.
We always have to think in whose best interest it is to destroy everything in order they’d make insane profits. They will take off and leave the Earth for complete destruction.
It’s also so that almost every single person is involved in extreme consumerism nowadays. That leads to all kinds of disasters, yet, we do not even think about it. I once wrote a few articles about that. Who listens? Nobody!
Great and thought-provoking article!
Well, we Humans as a specie, we are stiff-necked, and we learn the hard way, if anything this year has been so far a forewarning of things to come, look at the fires in the West Coast, and the Hurricanes in the Gulf of Mexico, and not to talk about the Pandemic all over the World.
What’s next a famine?
Or an Ice Age?
Thank you for your response Inese, we appreciate it. 🙂
You got us spellbound pictures and lots of thought provoking info.
Thank you for your words, we appreciate them. 🙂
I believe that when we are not seeing and not hearing what is really there either through willful or inadvertent ignorance the Universe will shake things up. We have for too long avoided reality and shied away from facing our shadow side. We have all contributed in one way or the other to the illusions of our world and now is a wake up call as much as a nightmare in an individual’s dreams is there to bring awareness of what is not working or what we are not paying attention to current events are doing this for the collective.
Yes, I agree, if we do not pay attention to what’s going on, next thing you know, it will not be a soft knock on the door, trying to call our attention, but a battering ram tearing down the door!
Thank you for your comment. 🙂
Of course, we knew. But will we remember and make sure it doesn’t happen again. No, we won’t.
Well, we Humans Historically we had prove, to be very stubborn, and perpetually afflicted by a generational Ignorance, since each individual need to be taught, from cradle to adulthood, and anytime we skip to do so, here, and there, we produce a big problem.
So the cynic in me agree with you, but we learn better when we suffer, pain our best teacher, when I grew as a child corporal punishment was perfectly accepted by parents, and teachers, and they used to say: “La letra con sangre entra.” I guess the equivalent in English will be: “Spare the rod, and spoil the child.”
So, we will suffer the consequences.
Thank you Micheline for your comment, we appreciate it. 🙂
Reblogged this on Ned Hamson's Second Line View of the News.
Thank you! 😊