There is so much brilliance and beauty in so many humans.
I am thinking of Richard Feynman, Rachel Carson, Georgia O’Keefe, Rick Archer, Lynne Twist, Brian Swimme, Jean Houston, and Rumi, to name an eclectic few who jump to mind. Humanity is not simply a parasitic scourge on the earth as current pop culture insists on inferring. In the news, we hear and see much of the baser and inept actions of our kind; it seems the common wisdom is that such content is what sells. But it is not a true or clear picture. And an outcome of this 21st-century trend is hopelessness, fear, and anxiety. We have come to expect the worst. We do not trust goodness. We defend rather than welcome.
Let’s not accept this. Let’s not swim in these waters, in this current. Instead, let’s choose to see beyond the talking heads who confuse outrage with intellect, aggression with courage, and stubbornness with commitment. Let’s you and I – today, right now – choose to reject such polarizing behaviors. Instead, let’s pay attention to balance, to the brilliance and beauty that has come before and is among us now. Let’s recall and immerse ourselves in the pools of…
Carl Sagan, Eartha Kitt, Brian Greene, Bach, Joan Borysenko, David Bowie, Dorothy Parker, David Bohm, A.A. Milne, E.B. White, Ursula K. LeGuin, YoYo Ma…. Oh, I could go on and on. Mind you, I am not saying that there is not grief, madness, pain, and betrayals (and, yes, among those I’ve listed here as well as in the general population). There is cruelty, desperation, poverty, and multi-misunderstandings. And these days it seems a lot of greed is going around. But seeking balance is restorative: the dark and the light, the in and the out, the up and the down, the ridiculous and the sensible, the funny and the sad.… We can choose which to accentuate and which to acknowledge without dismissing its “other.” I choose to accentuate true beauty and find that also noting the dark and the ugly serves to reinforce the importance and the value of my choice.
Chaos theory teaches us that chaos births order, which then, at some point, falls back into disarray once again. Good ol’ entropy; change, the only constant. I believe this fabulous dynamic is always spinning towards achieving balance in our universe. And that gives me hope.