Peaceful Species Survival Together (PSST Pass it on)

As a species, we humans have the capacity to work together in collaborative peace and community delight – dancing and singing after a joyful harvest of plenty.  And we have the capacity to act as treacherous beasts – competing for limited resources like starving, wounded creatures.  We can rise up or sink down into killing and wounding those perceived to be between us and what we need.

We have the capacity to outsource our love and our hate, distancing ourselves from cuddling a hungry, traumatized, dirty child in an inner city or refugee camp whom we may support financially, and distancing ourselves from the death and destruction perpetrated in our names with our tax dollars.  By separating ourselves emotionally  from the happenings around us, we can feel a bit safer, and we can deny any role we might play in harming others through our complicity from afar.

I see so many signs that I will keep having intrusive thoughts of danger, and feelings of fear.  I know that violence or the harsher side of climate change could reach me or my family or friends in life-or-death ways, and that others suffer already.  My fears occasionally bring up the overpowering love for “us” and unsavory thoughts of hatred for “them” – those who have frightened or harmed us, or killed or injured others, or who might stand in the way of my relatively peaceful, prosperous existence.  My animal brain can hijack my humanity.  I can start to feel something like hatred toward a political party, creating my own “us” and “them” mentality, thinking it will make me safer somehow.

We pull in those we love, and push out those who seem less important, less worthy.  We take sides, and have strong political views as protection against the Truth that we truly share the same life raft now.  We fall into selfishness and wild-animal fight or flight mode. Or our systems shut down as we fall into playing dead, often without knowing it.  By playing dead, we let the news wash around us, and keep on with our lives as usual, living in denial about the dangers that threaten us and our children and grandchildren.

We stop short of understanding that those who frighten us lost so much already, that they lost their capacity for patience and peace when someone took so much away from them – family, friends, food, water, land, respect, security, prosperity, time for fun and rest.

Are we capable of noticing each time we let fear take away our humanity?  Can we translate the hateful language or behavior of others into ideas about what “they” may be needing?  Can we feel compassion for an innocent and beautiful newborn baby who lacked what was needed for so long, that desperation set in?  Can we appreciate that very few humans, if any, are born unable to love?  The world around us shapes so much of who we become.  What do we expect from a baby who has love and plenty?  What do we expect from a baby who is neglected, abused, raised in poverty, surrounded by violence? 

Can we accept our complicity in creating the very hatred and neglect that turns against us now, through our privilege, our striving for love and comfort at the expense of others?  Can we accept that we have been part of neglecting and harming the Earth that we always knew was our sustenance?

Can we center ourselves and commit to peaceful consideration of how best to meet everyone’s needs around the world?  Can we refrain from dwelling in thoughts of  violent ways of addressing our fears, when we know they never work?  Wherever we keep our compassion and creativity, we need to bring it out and act peacefully for positive solutions to climate change and meeting everyone’s needs as the best path to friendship and peace. 

Can I live each day with more mindful consideration of all I know about Love and Truth, Peace and Justice, Excess and Sustainability, Privilege and Oppression, Compassion and Respect?