Stories

So many times I find myself searching for the right words to share at the end of class. I wonder what the right message should be? needs to be? in this moment to address or bring into focus all that’s happening in the world. But I’ve realized that thinking in terms of right and wrong is irrelevant. Being right, doing right, thinking right has become so immensely subjective. Do we even know what is right any more? 

I will tell you what I do know.

I do know that being human is about connecting, growing, learning and thriving. To be together in this one humanity. To support and help one another not just survive but thrive. Yes… I’ll say it again – TO THRIVE. But our current world – which we have all agreed to in someway and to some degree – was built through a lens of scarcity, fear and disconnection. It is full of borders, regulations, policies, a broken food system, a one-sided economy, divided religions, and separation. 

Now that things are falling apart we begin to see the brokenness more clearly and we can only be as we are. It’s the cracks that let the light in. Embrace the broken. Step into the shadows this new light casts. Sit in the space between our lost old reality and this new yet to be created reality. 

Sit without the need or the striving to fill in the story as quickly as we can. Sit in our uncertainty and give ourselves permission to feel to take responsibility for the stories we tell. For the stories we believe. Sit a little closer to your edge.

Let’s revisit those stories – the stories we tell about ourselves, about our experiences, and even about each other.  The stories we hear. The stories we choose to believe and the ones we don’t.

To recognize each story as an accumulation of truths, falsehoods and individual biases and personal perceptions, allowing them to fall away exposing our limiting beliefs, stereotypes, judgments and separation, leaving behind our humanity. 

In these stories we easily forget that we all breathe the same air, we all love, and we all long for something. We all feel pain and sadness and no matter the color of our skin, we all bleed red. 

This is a time of upheaval and chaos in the world on so many levels. A magnification of all that is not working. what no longer serves us – serves humanity and the world together. So yes protest if you must, sign petitions, spend your dollar where it matters to you and whatever else you are called to do. These are all beautiful and needed external actions.

But change – true change – grows from the inside out of each and every one of us. So check in, dissect and get real with your beliefs, your biases, your stories and your privilege. Yes, all of us here right now have privilege – and benefit from that privilege – whether we want to recognize it or not.

This is where the work is… Are you open? are you ready? To take that internal deep dive?? 

Leaving you with this last truth – our wars/conflicts/arguments/disagreements with other people are public declarations of self importance.

We are all important.

We all matter.

Humanity matters.

Let’s do better. 

We can do better.

We MUST do better.