Speaking to the Human Condition

Our fear of being hurt and exposed keeps us from being open, but in the wise words of Rumi, “A wound is the place where the light enters you.” When we learn to surrender to the will and movements of life, we discover that it’s no different from white-water rafting; surrendering to the currents can make the ride very enjoyable. We will only tire ourselves out and become frustrated if we try to go against the current. Remember that it is the sail and not the gale that sets our course. We all know what it’s like to start the day with a poor outlook, but how do we feel when we realize that the outcome was due to the mindset we started the day with? Bad days can be self-fulfilling prophecies especially when we start them off with a negative attitude. Changing our mindsets will allow us to change the outcome of what seems to be a bad day. Things will not always be as perfect as we want them, but if we stay mindful, we will always find something to be grateful for because things could always be worse! We have all heard about the law of attraction, resonance, vibration, and so on, but the bottom line is that we don’t manifest what we want; we manifest what we believe. In the words of Confucius, “He who says he can and he who says he can’t are both usually right.” There is no right or wrong, just choices. The quest for perfection is a false one since the moment something is perfect, it is no longer changed or moved; we need to evolve and must grow or life would have no purpose. Humanity has reached the threshold of the golden age, a time of a commencement, the end of one cycle and the beginning of another, a time of new wisdom and understanding, but it is also the time for us to choose to move forward and gain strength from our diversity or let fear hold us back and turn on one another because we are different. Diversity is the key to growth. Science has demonstrated this clearly by the wisdom of the crowd. The more estimates we have, the closer to accuracy we will come. If five hundred people try guessing how many marbles there are in a bowl, the average of their guesses will be close to the amount even if one guesses ten marbles and someone else guesses a million. The diversity of the guessers’ answers will help refine the result. Imagine how imprecise the number would be if we chose to ignore some people’s guesses because we deemed them incorrect or did not match our group thinking? We have turned the miniscule difference in our DNA into a reason we are so different and have created the polarization we now sense and see increasing the chasm of fear. History repeats itself when people don’t understand it or when they forget it. They forget that discrimination is just part of the human condition due to ignorance; people of all races, religions, and colors have gone through this. Even as recently as the last century, we have seen such detachment in society, and it wasn’t just a question of color or faith then as it has been for Muslims since 9/11. I refer to the struggles and rejection of the Irish getting away from the famine over a century ago, the Holocaust, refugees from the Middle East and Africa in our present era escaping war-torn countries, and the Chinese in some cases due to the coronavirus pandemic. There is always something or someone that causes fear, and rejection rather than understanding to justify exclusion. Dr. Wayne Dyer said that FEAR was False Evidence Appearing Real. Polarization has overtaken our judgment, and pride justifies violence in correcting what we find inferior and different with races, languages, religions, and political views. We pit brother against brother and even men against women as to who is the better sex when the sad truth is that none of us is an island. We are all different but complementary fruits in the same bowl. How can one fruit claim to be better than another? That is subjective. We have so much in common with the two most important factors being that we all bleed and that we will all die. If we could for one minute remember that our ride here is very temporary, we would make it the best ride for us and those around us. It is human nature to not value what we have until we lose it. We should value the things we have while we have them because nothing lasts forever. If you learned that you didn’t have that much time to live, wouldn’t you make the best use of that time? Let me put that in perspective by asking you to answer these questions. • If you knew that you would succeed at whatever you chose, what would you choose to do? • If you knew you had millions of dollars in the bank, what would you do or be? • If you were given twelve months left to live, how would you spend them? Compassion is not costly. It is remembering that there is an internal reward when we think of others. We as human beings are innately good; we are born pure but lose our path due to the way our parents and the world around us educate us. We are born with no preconceptions or judgments. Babies and children show us what caring, sharing, and compassion look like. We can always learn from children, who keep life very simple. If you ask children, “What is more powerful than God and more evil than the devil?” they will usually answer, “Nothing.” If you ask adults that, you will receive many answers, which will show you how we complicate things. The Dalai Lama said that if we teach our children to meditate for five minutes twice a week to learn compassion, we can change the world in one generation.