Halfway There

We stand on a border between inspiration and desolation, hoping to reach one extreme but forever muddled by the distractions of the media. The ultimate vice, it numbs your mind whilst inoculating your ever-more-fertile brain with stress, insecurity, vanity and misinformation. It teaches us to reach for escape while pushing at us images of happiness, calm, perfection -- any way out of our current stressors -- our predicament. A new sports car, perhaps it is, when you are struggling with car troubles. Alcohol, when you are feeling sad. Cigarettes, when you are feeling stressed and a slew of different merchandise for when you are feeling empty -- as we so often do.And as this mountain of consumer goods grows around us -- like a fortress protecting us from everyone we might learn to love -- our problems grow, as well. We turn in desperation to find our few remaining friends drowning in the same desolation and denial. “I just need to make some extra money," they insist. They are like recovering addicts, justifying a fix in their hours of weakness. “I would do anything for a cigarette, right now.” We all know you would do anything for a lot of things -- be it to ‘improve’ your environment or ‘increase’ your efficiency at work. We are desperate.And the sad thing is that we are all sullen victims of this system just as much as we are proprietors of it. We anguish in our stresses -- our insecurities -- then we march down to the DMV with our myriad problems and take it out on the poor woman behind the counter. She recoils only momentarily from your aggression, but already accustomed to these slanders, she simply flips down the mask of her helmet which was the only piece of armor she had left compromised. Then, with the coolness of steel she denies you further help. Who is the victim here, though? Who is evil? Nobody! And Everybody! The wealthy are tired of being alone, the poor are tired of being overcrowded. The hyperwealthy suffer from the kind of mental health crises that should probably have them locked in a ward. The addicts probably have unresolved traumas -- no doubt created and perpetuated by the very system they are escaping from with their many available substances. The working class is so dissolved in their fight to gain status, comfort, community, stability -- happiness -- that they fail to empathize with the tent-dwelling houseless people that they inadvertently forced from their homes. They see them instead as a scourge. They hate them and in turn (and for many good reasons) the homeless hate the housed. Through all of this, so many voids are opened between a society of people who are exactly the same. So many triggers pulled, buttons pushed. So many legal battles and social media posts gone ‘viral’ and tearing us further and further apart. “All lives matter,” are at arms against “Black lives matter,” feeling that somehow this recognition for black lives threatens the fragile ground they are trying to balance their already less-than-perfect white lives upon. When will we see and truly appreciate the greater enemy? The enemy we cannot fight unless we come together.I often long for the affection I feel that I missed out in my childhood. I struggled with feelings of alienation growing up. I sought affection from my dad (midwestern and often times cold) and his girlfriends (often only in my life for very short periods), I sought affection in my mom, a loving and nurturing woman who suffers from fibromyalgia, migraines and the ongoing stress of raising three dependent children, herself dependent on government checks. Now, in my mid-twenties, I still long for that affection. I feel always my thirst for it not quenched, my hunger left unsatisfied. I seek relationships that fill that void and find only codependency or an escape into alcohol and television. I wonder to myself why we cannot have this love from everyone. A sense of belonging, a sense of community, a sense that we are being cared for. Why can we not see kindness in our neighbors eyes. Why do we see a difference in skin or language or privilege as barriers for our love?To “all lives matters:" to fight for black lives is to resist against the 1% and a corrupted government. Yes, it may mean giving up some of your fragile privileges, but ultimately, those are merely placed there to keep you vulnerable. To those who are angry at the privileged for their privilege, I understand -- at least to whatever capacity I am capable of understanding. But look at the other side! These people are tricked into this privilege. They are kept a rung above you with little chance to get higher. They are kept separate because together you all have too much power! They are unhappy, too! They are alienated, too! They are stressed about money, too! Just on a different scale. We are all suffering!And so I ask everybody -- especially the privileged -- let us create space for conversation. Create space for mistakes. We are going to say stupid shit. We cannot always be culturally sensitive -- at least not until we learn (through doing) how to be so. Let us come together at events, over meals and share our privileges and freedoms. Let us grow as a society from the bottom of the bottom and become a force to be reckoned with. We cannot take on the 1%. We cannot take on our corrupt government. But we can set an example for a way of life. Where every individuals’ few dollars become the community's millions. Where everyone is fed, housed, clothed and cared for. Where your kids can wander the street and you know your greater community is watching over them. This has to start on the community scale. This has to be diverse. This has to cross red-lining boundaries and socio-economic normalities. This means intentionally creating space for homeless people, renting a room for below market rate to help a struggling mother. Barbequing in the front yard and sharing food with the neighbors. Setting up a projector and watching movies as a neighborhood. Helping each other garden, building each other up! It sounds utopian but this is how villages did it for thousands of years! Yes, there will be conflict. Yes, people will take advantage. We will develop systems for how to deal with this. We need to develop self governing communities of a sustainable size. Some say that size is fifteen people (maybe fifteen households?). We need hundreds of these communities -- thousands! All connected through trade, shared media, core values. We need to take ownership of not just our dwellings, but the block we inhabit. We need to utilize already public spaces! We need to take care of the land we inhabit, be it improving the habitat for wildlife (native plants, animals, fungi; cleaning trash off the streets; fixing our homes and our neighbors’ homes. We need public space where people feel a connection to their neighbors and the place. And the only way to do this is together. Start today. Start tomorrow. Start a weekly barbeque or a movie night and invite all your neighbors. Maybe two come this week. Maybe three next week. But over time the only thing we can promise to each other is consistency and a warm welcome. Make it happen!