Letting The Day Guide Us

I do not wish to be confounded by wisdom or blinded by ignorance. We are living in times of great environmental changes coinciding with the arrival of many of the consequences and damages that the last fifty years of our industrialization and materialism has produced.

No matter where we live our governments are not fully happy that we can see what they're doing; for the first time, we can go to other countries' searches and use a translator and know what is the rest of the story is out there...and judge for ourselves what is going on and what we stand for and against.

For the first time, with the Internet, we have produced something that frees us and lifts the boundaries and borders we are contained by, something that gives a broad view of what is really going on in the world; what is the problem, the debate, our actions and the world's response. The political magicians have lost their wands and we see the puppet's strings. It is a free education for all and the means to express yourself to a world public.

We are the enlightened result of our technologies and for once we really can speak to each other and see that our differences are sometimes that we are not allowed the freedom to be the same or to know know the same and understand the same. That corruption in all governments hides behind the efforts of good men.

We are capable of exchanging knowledge. Of cooling off the heated debates with answers to questions that may have yet to be asked. Our social structure is not just the cultural vertical, it spreads out horizontal and crosses oceans and plains and deserts, no longer are we bound by our geography of waterways, mountains too high and desert plains too wide to cross and survive.

These are the days when great things can be accomplished by simply beginning to do what we can individually do to make a difference, to acknowledge so many of our choices have been harmful to ourselves and others, as we begin to recognize the effects those choices have had.

So many songs have not been heard, so many paintings have never been seen, so many hearts have been lifted to a higher love for humanity, so many intellects have been awakened to the call to speak the truths and see the solutions more clearly, so much poetry and parable has not been shared. So many lives remain to be spared. So many children to be raised. So any crops to be planted. So many wounds to be healed.

So much love has been consumed by hate's worst fears, when in the light of love and justice there would be nothing to fear.

Sometimes you have to undo what went wrong, what has been done in ignorance that shouldn't have been done. Sometimes you have to chose between the lesser of two evils... and without honesty? How can we chose wisely?

Couldn't we start by looking past our own reflection on the water's surface? Couldn't we could begin by diving into the depths of opposing views and by rocking the boat by reading someone Else's story or by really studying someone Else's picture of what is going on in their part of the world?

We have been given not enough truthful information about each other to know or hate one another, can we not simply chose to hear one another out? What is the harm in choosing to listen patiently? What if we chose to spread love not hate, to focus on communication and understanding that every country is someone Else's home and livelihood?

My father, who had no sons, taught me that a man without his word was nothing and recently at 87 he showed me that it does not matter what our minds can remember about yesterday, as long as our hearts remember how to be kind and just in the stand we make today.