Lighter tomorrows

If you've given something up ... if you've shifted your attention away from yourself to someone else, then you've got to feel lighter. You see how simple it all can be.

Yeah, yeah, I know ... all you do is sacrifice yourself for others. Who doesn't? All we all do is give and give and give and everybody we know just takes and takes and takes. No wonder the world is so screwed up. If everyone were like me ... right.

That's where we always get stuck, isn't it? We just love to think that we're just fine and everyone else is the problem. That's only partially true. Yes, everyone else is a problem, but we're the problem, too. There are no exceptions. Master George said it best: you're born, you're guilty, end of story. That's right. Being present is the admission of guilt. You're here, you're part of the problem.

The funny part is, contrary to popular belief, no one has ever expected you to change the world all on your own. You can't. You just aren't that important. Why place that burden on yourself? It's really simple ... and obvious ... if you stop to think about it.

Humans are one of nature's creatures who is most helpless when born. We are not capable of living on our own for quite some time (and some people never manage to mature that far, but that's another story). We aren't suited to eat "outside" (mom) food till around nine months after we show up. We can't walk till around then either, and we have no idea where to go anyway. We spend years depending on our parents for everything: food, shelter, clothing. We can't function without learning lots of useful and useless things in school, and even then, we don't grow or hunt our own food, most of us don't know how to cook. We are, and remain, highly dependent upon others for our mere survival. It's time to simply acknowledge this simple fact.

The point is that nature has made us dependent on others. There's nothing wrong with that. It's how we are, by nature. All that bullshit about individualism, rugged or otherwise, is just that: bullshit. You are not any more of an individual than anyone else, and in the end, we are our own selves, that is true, but we are selves who cannot live without others. The sooner we own up to that simple fact, the sooner things even stand a chance of getting better.