embracing the turning point

an essay on how i'm moving through helplessness in world ablaze

times are more heated than ever.

division overshadows even the wisest of “collective healing” influencers, who they themselves need to use Instagram, Facebook, and TikTok to sell their offerings in abrasive and aggressive strategies to stay favorable to the almighty content Algorithms.

massive data centers eclipse small communities– hoarding land from farmers and consuming local resources. my heart broke hearing from a friend that their relative recently sold their family ranch for over $30M to a tech giant. the ranch itself was placed along a river in natural wilderness.

driving around, there are fewer & fewer “hole-in-the-wall” family-owned restaurants, while chain restaurants clobber over each other to panel our roads with their brazened branding; demolishing old buildings with character for their plain, boxy, modern construction quick-builds.

my own admittedly cavalier Amazon purchase history has me reconsidering my own contribution to the mass consumption and packaging waste involved with delivery and returns. my veins boiled when a small chapstick i ordered came wrapped in multi-layered plastic bags with capacity many magnitude the size of the quaint salve.

what we trade in convenience is our very lifeblood, and that of our planet’s.

earth broods while we pull our virtual reality goggles down over our tiring eyes– whispering, “save me” to them.

i am no longer able to sit by.

looking at the stacks of books lining my shelves, i wonder how to synthesize all that i’ve learned in my life to really confront this rampant toxicity, war, and consumption in society.

as a kid, while reading about people who hid jews during WWII, i often tortured myself with the hypothetical conundrum of if i would have the gaul and courage to have hidden jews while the gestapo went door-to-door. now, as ICE has begun a war campaign against the marginalized of society, it seems plausible as an actual quandary in the near future that i will have to put money where my moralistic mouth is, to uphold values i deem essential and birthright.

in the swirl of our socio-political-cultural mayhem, i simply wonder what i am to do.

being a counselor providing therapy feels more like hucking a shot-glass of water on a forest-fire than anything substantial; a well-intentioned attempt, but hugely ineffective. while it is a vocational step in the right direction for me, i’m finding it doesn’t quench scratch the itch of a deeper desire in me. i’m finding i’d rather stop applying symptomatic bandaids, to pull out my maps, tie my boots, and ruck upriver to locate and pull the source of these issues by their goddamn roots.

while catching some sunlight earlier this week, i had the realization that most everything we need to coexist as a human species is free: WATER. SUNLIGHT. COMMUNITY. FIRE. BIRTH. DEATH. LAND. SUSTENANCE.

everything beyond those is a gap. sure, on might be paying for convenience or for surety to access. but that gap alone is where war, greed, suffering, and waste incur.

what is a man to do?

i’ve recently turned 31, and the amount of responsibility i feel to apply myself has grown so strong i fear i no longer have the option to further neglect it.

i feel my whole life has prepared me to answer such a question. certainly it will involve using my voice, becoming educated in the socio-political-cultural “dogs” my introverted heart so wishes to “let lie”; but i’m certainly ready to have some difficult conversations with not only myself, but with those around me.

getting up to speed on the current events of the world seems daunting and has me feeling susceptible. tender. exposed. because i truly have to sit down and find my own answers to what I think about the world and its happenings?

there is an ember of something here in all this.

sure– i could delete my social media & become the hermit i’ve always longed to be. but that only serves to remove my perspective from the global conversation.

in applying myself, i’m finding what we need is an alternative “social media” to meet in, where there aren’t ads being forced down our throats, and the sole purpose isn’t to devour our attention– but rather to unite us in building a sustainable, healthy, prosperous future for us and our following generations. a secret garden.

more to come.