"It's been a week since the world has changed. " Connecting Thoughts.
Sep 18 '01
The Bottom Line Get back on your feet. Go: one step at a time. Remember: Human life is unique and precious.
Connecting Thoughts...
"It's been a week since the world has changed."
I cope with the tragic events of last week by finding a way to at least partially understand how it could be and by holding onto a perspective that holds human life as the most precious of all. Since reading the thoughts and opinions of others has proved helpful and interesting, I share my thoughts and opinions with you to also be
helpful in some way.
When it is broken all the way down what keeps us apart, what creates the tragedy we are now an eyewitness to-- is the underlying hate of those who don't have and those who do have.
The poor sees images of wealth in the U.S., and are taught the reason some people have more is because they prevent other people from having very much at all. They are poor because others are rich and the richest nation in the world in the United States. For the U.S. to have so much, the poor must have little. It leads to ill will, jealousy and hate. If you believe there is no hope for you because fate robbed you of any fair opportunities, then it becomes easy for you to hate.
When you have beliefs and opinions under the guise of a religion, you become self-righteous. What was once an opinion gets molded into a manifesto and becomes an ultimate destiny. You devote your life to your cause, more so if you have little else in your life but your religion and beliefs. Your cause, your religion connects you to others through a foundation of faith and like beliefs. Connections being most important of all. Connections between each other, connections between life and death. You once had little to believe in, now you can believe in a cause and the cause is important because it is part of a religion. It is easier to devote your life to a religion and a cause when so many others are doing the same thing. If the cause or your interpretation of the cause demands your life...you sacrifice your life without question believing without question you will be rewarded for your faith.
Patriotism is also very much like a religion. Though we work very hard not to confuse it with religion. Patriotism having spirit, but not being truly spiritual.
What is truly unfortunate is how so many are brainwashed and how so many will be killed--must be killed.
The once innocent now converted to the cause after the fact because fate made their education limited or non-existent, so that they now become devoted to their nation's or their religion's cause, war, holy war, military action, or however you would like to phrase it.
And there are all the people who are in the way. The innocent peoples whose possible death and injury is considered regrettable but necessary. The acceptable casualty loss. The loss of life measured against the necessity of making sure the message... the cause... the belief is known all over the world.
Millions judge America and Americans as one thing. The powerful giant will strike back because that is the role we positively must play. Most would consider it wrong if we do nothing. Even our most mortal enemies expect we must retaliate. And so we must, and we will.
The world is a far different place than it was at the height of the Cold War. Do we really know what we are doing? Do we have anything approaching a real understanding of how our actions will affect the world for years to come? How are we measuring the pulse of the world? Are we letting the media do it for us? Are we measuring the pulse based on CIA and government operatives in other countries who don't even speak the language of the people they are working around? When we kill people who are in the way, when we kill people who believe that greed has led to their poverty and they only live to fight evil . . . are we killing justly?
Is our interest based 90 percent on economics? Is it just business? The business of being the most powerful nation in the world and we must do regrettable but justified things to protect our livelihoods?
Life is pretty cheap at times like this.
5,000 of our lives are worth much more than 5,000 lives someplace else. They are people who are exactly like us.. . . they could have been us. . . They are also Americans.
And most of them were not Americans in the military. They were innocent, because they were not terrorists, because they did not protect terrorists.... because they do not allow terrorists to take over their countries or governments, because they did not elect terrorists or people who sympathize with terrorists or people who condone less than free societies and less than truth, justice, equality….
Take away the harsh labels and you can see the differences between people can be measured in degrees and its a battle between the haves and the have nots.
Of course we must take action. We can question it.... But when you back anyone into a corner they must act.
We also need to believe in order and justice. It seems like a very reasonable thing to believe in.
We live with it and ourselves because actions must be taken and most of us are not directly involved in any of the actions. Most of us will not be directly involved in the actions. Individually we might be our government and our religion but it is so much bigger than any one of us. US. It is no longer you or me it becomes us. We a part of a community of a team and our own deeply personal feelings and doubts must be put aside for the greater good of the collective us. It becomes less personal when it is Us against Them rather than Me against You. Us is impersonal but we are still members on the same team who have more in common than Them--them who are on the other team--who are not us… who don't like us… who resent and hate us.
How do we honor life? The sanctity of life. You can believe in the sacredness
of life in many ways. Even if you do not believe in a God, life is a precious
thing. If you do believe in a God, almost every religion believes that life is
precious and that an individual must not take one's life or take another's
life.
So when lives are taken we dishonor life, we dishonor our core beliefs and
dishonor God.
But lives have been taken… have been we believe by people who are doing so because they believe they are serving God by doing so. They are not serving any God we want to believe in. If God says life is HIS gift… then the gift is destroyed and dishonored when we take our own life or the lives of others. And most people in the world believe that.
But not all.
So since most believe that, the majority must rule. Civilized society depends on an orderly majority.
What do we do to honor life? The ones around us and the ones we call our own? Do we forget our individual selves in time like this and look at others to blame to ease the pain and suffering?
At what point do we not forgive ourselves? And then what do we about that?
We live with the compromises we make. Most are made for a reason we can easily justify... but not all.
So how do we go about finding the balance again that lets us get through the little things that are important to ourselves, our loved ones, our children......?
We must do it one step at a time. That's what we know how to do, and that's how things are always done. With steps. One step at a time. We cope the best way we can cope, we try to understand, we try to be aware of what is going on and we try to be sensitive to was it just and what is not.
Hopefully we embrace the handful of people around us and treat them with love and respect and remind them how appreciated and loved they are. We act like the best people we can be with the people who are most important to us.
And we occupy our thoughts with a mixture of things and activities we pretend we are in control of and with those things we pretend we have no control of but must cope with and learn to deal with.
We all have different and unique ways of coping.... Accepting on some level what occurs so that we can go on. If we don't accept it, at least in part, it's nearly impossible to continue on.
I try to find my sense of humor.... There it is... I grasp it.... Sometimes too tightly and lose it again. It's difficult right now… but I know it's important.
The smiles, the laughs relieve the pressure, reduces the stress.
Is resistance futile?
Can we take resistance less seriously and laugh at some of it?
We accept life is not fair and yet strive to make it more fair because I suppose we are both optimists and masochists.
Many of us are moved by those wonderful little moments of human life we observe. We can see some of them framed and captured on television. We see them fictionalized and re-created in movies and described for us in books, or captured by an artists' brush. Life moments framed and captured by artists. Artists who have found the right balance of what they see and share it with us--connect to many of us.
Connections. Connections are very much a vital part of life.
We are always searching for ways to connect and disconnect. Right now we do it to cope with tragedy and unpleasant things.
I wish there was a way we could all close our eyes at the same time and see that small moment of life that touches us deeply and makes us acutely aware of how precious every single life is. A moment that reminds us how we must never, ever forget or put aside how precious, special and unique every life is.
For some it might be represented with the spark that lights up within a child's eyes, or the loving glance of a mother, or the intensity of passion in young lovers' gazes or the deep
Calm-ness and love in the eyes of old lovers.
Moments where the connections are captured… and allow us to connect to each other by being reminded of them.
We must remember, always remember that we are all very deeply connected to each other.
9-18-01
Copyright© Christopher J. Jarmick 2001. The above work is protected by international copyright law.
Christopher Jarmick,is the author of The Glass Cocoon with Serena F. Holder a critically acclaimed, steamy suspense thriller. For information on Author readings/signings or availability of special autographed editions of the novel email: glasscocoon@hotmail for details.
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