What The World Needs Now

By Judith Gayle | Political Waves

Chances are that you’ve thought a bit about your own mortality this week. If you’re empathetic in the slightest, the news that thousands of global citizens were suddenly swept away by a tsunami not only takes the breath away but turns the inner eye toward self and survival. Compound that with a global nuclear crisis in the hands of corporate hacks and frightened government lackeys. This is the stuff that makes End-timers foam at the mouth and claw at their eyes while average citizens run for potassium iodide and load up on bottled water and batteries.

Is this a global emergency, we wonder? We find ourselves unprepared for a worst-case scenario. Since the end of the Cold War, concerns such as these have been replaced by Disney-esque portrayals of asteroids colliding with earth or the dark, apocalyptic vision of Glenn Beck advertising his dire, three-hour radio pronouncements as “the fusion of entertainment and enlightenment.” Is there something we’re supposed to be doing? We ask the question of the government and get a mix of science and smoke. We’re advised to remain calm. Nothing to see here, move along.

The president told us this week not to panic over the nuclear situation because his experts tell him there’s no immediate danger to the United States. (And by the way, I think it’s likely Obama believes this. I recall my shock when he took his wife and kids to visit the Gulf in Summer 2010, both swimming and eating the seafood; something I’d never have done.) Government tends to rumble into overreaction when the locals go hinky, so it’s in everyone’s best interest to keep things calm. It seems disingenuous for those in the know to keep mum about these things, but “need to know” has always tilted toward the inner circles of power. Think of yourself as the outer circle, then, attempting to connect these dots in some cogent manner. If you don’t regularly read Planet Waves and suddenly become aware that the whole world seems to be holding its breath, life quickly gets a good deal more confusing.

Now, poised as we are on a supermoon — some of us prepared to bark at it — we may be looking around to see what everyone else is doing. Some do the hard work of discovery, gathering facts and weighing options that others have no desire to hear. Some attempt to be mindful consumers, pursuing healthy food choices and green solutions in a world thick with denial. Others try to maintain normalcy by relying on social diversions and the number one prescription in the United States, over 230 million written yearly: antidepressants, otherwise known as “calm in a bottle.” But things speed up when the right circumstances come together, explosion occurs, and windows of experience blow open to let in fresh air. Denial ain’t what it used to be.

Mubarak was in denial when Cairo’s streets filled with protesters and vowed to step down later in the year. He’s retired now, living by the seaside and licking his wounds. Colonel Qaddafi and his family are said to be in deep denial about the new No Fly Zone approved by the international community. Despite his announcement of an immediate cease fire, the battle for Libya still rages as his government plots the death of the upstart rebels. Sometimes it takes a smack up-side the head to get a sense of reality. Or, summed up in almanac-speak by founding father, Ben Franklin, “When the well is dry, we learn the worth of water.”

If we find ourselves unprepared for this leg of our journey, we should give ourselves a good talking to. We’ve been rushing toward such a crisis for a long time, dark forces threatening the good nature and psychic disposition of most of the world’s people. In the year 2000, our High Court went rogue and gave away the democratic process for selecting leadership in our nation. In 2003, the Bush administration took it upon themselves to declare war upon a nation that had done nothing to provoke such action. In the months following, more than three trillion dollars went into that project with less than stellar results. No taxes were levied to pay down that enormous cost, and we suffer for it today.

We got a really big reality check in 2004 when the Christmas tsunami showed us the power of Gaia, giving us a heads up on environmental catastrophes. It was a shock, but it opened our hearts. In 2005, we all — literally — watched a natural disaster destroy a major US city when its substandard levees buckled, decimating poorer neighborhoods and stranding its most vulnerable citizens. Our expectations that government would step in quickly turned to fervent uncertainty whether it would step in at all. More heart opening, more compassion growing.

Next — inevitably, we find there’s a ‘next’ as we ponder the decline of our ability to respond to crisis — over 205 MILLION gallons of crude were spilled out into the Gulf of Mexico by British Petroleum in 2010. The full ramifications of this toxic incident are not yet known, although the spate of young dolphin death, reported health challenges, and BP backpedaling on paying the bill only add to the anger of those who knew it never had to happen. More than most, this was the crisis that divided the public and the parties, asking each to choose a different future.

When I first heard about the Japanese quake my thoughts turned to Haiti. Haiti, the country with such a karmic load that it never seems able to rise above bare subsistence, lost upward of a quarter million citizens. The massive 2010 earthquake there was quickly complicated by a hurricane that pounded more than a million homeless souls camped in tents and cardboard shelters. Even now, the monies pledged to rebuild it are lost in limbo while wave after wave of cholera infects two to three times more residents than were killed in the quake. Let’s take this lesson to heart — clean water and functioning infrastructure are critical issues. We ignore them at our own peril because, as they say in New Orleans, “Everyone has a Ninth Ward.”

Yes, since the turn of the century we’ve been getting a tutorial, not in how to survive but rather in how not to. The question at hand is whether we want to survive, because a whole lot of us are behaving as if we don’t. How seriously twisted the political nonsense that comes out of the culture wars sounds when compared to questions of mortality for millions. How ludicrous and parochial the arguments against school districts and banking oversight appear, how criminal it seems to want to eliminate the Environmental Protection Agency or reduce the funding for tsunami alert. The well is dry, we’ve finally learned the worth of water. Right now if there is anything going on in our minds besides love for the planet and good wishes for our neighbor, we are part of the darkness that assails us.

It seems to me that how we use our energy now is critical. We’ve pretty much pushed the envelope in wake-up calls, haven’t we? Now we must pull our heads out of the sand and take a good look at what’s become of our world. We must insist that the governments and corporations complicit in its various emergencies do the right thing. We have to shake our heads clear, understand that this is the eleventh hour, and make new decisions that benefit us all. I have very little concern about what is good for “American interests.” I have a wide-open heart for what is good for all of us, for what is loving and supportive to life.

What can we do? We can raise our emotional response a notch. We can stand up for truth and share it as often as possible. We can choose to serve because it opens our heart. We can live a life of integrity, reaping the satisfaction that being true to self provides us. We can watch our thoughts and words so we don’t add to the panic or problem, select actions and intentions that align with our highest goals for our self and our planet. Work tirelessly to make life beautiful for ourselves and others, take a bow as the hero in our own life script, and remember that nothing is destined, we’re making this up as we go along.

That’s the key to getting through this darkness: love fearlessly, every act reflecting that love, and let the rest go. That’s the only safe place to put our wounds and our hopes and our passions and our fears.

Is that enough to make everything right, you ask? I don’t know, but I’m pretty sure of this much. If you asked all those 15,000 or more people who lost a loved one in Japan what one thing is more important than any other, they would probably tell you it’s love and family. All the stuff we collect in a lifetime, all the things we think our lives were about, all disappear when the time comes. We are then left with just that one marvelous thing that glues the Universe together and keeps our heart beating: love. It’s the constant of life, the thing that inspires us to keep going, to keep trying. The thing that even heartbreak and sorrow can’t kill. That’s the thing we need to keep on our minds and in our hearts now, as we face tomorrow. That’s our true north because — surely we’ve learned by now — without it, we have nothing. With it, anything is possible.