Monday, February 8, 2016

Ashes, Ashes, We All Should Calm Down

Why do you think so many people are focused on war? Even in the simplest interactions we seem to use the language of fight and suffering.

Our politicians are fighting for us.

Our citizens are fighting against the abuses of our politicians.

Our efforts to lose weight are reflected upon as battles

We ludicrously discuss our journeys through the norms of life - jobs, relationships, community engagement - as though we are discovering new lands with the same measures of peril as Cortes and Columbus.

Children are treated like the spoils of war - the school that wins them is the better, no matter how lost the child.

In many cases we attach to faith, ideology, culture, or other apparatus claiming it as ‘shield’, ‘weapon’, our ‘warrior’ in the battle against….

Against what, exactly? What the heck are we all so conflict-ready for?

I ask as I wane and wilt away from fight the older I get. I realize that for a long time I arrived at every circumstance braced and brazen. Now, I think I must have seemed like a crazed cat screeching and scrambling from one room to the next, with nary a provocation. I look to the older among us and wonder, why is it that almost to a one, they all slow down, calm down, take pause before reply. Is it the onset of stupor or the wisdom of age?

Why should we all be angry at a performance that says ‘choose love’ and ‘this life matters’, as if it is an assault on love and life? It’s quite the opposite, isn’t it? I believe our battle-readiness has warped even our near sight.

I should think we might all wonder what has made us believe that in every endeavor we must fight, rather than work hard, and we might fight against that instigator, who most deserves the truth of that word. The rest that would come after might be so nice for us all.


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