Surprise me... please...

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posted by Steve | May 31, 2011

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I just watched this:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=laL5xY4BA78&feature=player_embedded

I thought about how ‘american’ the scene seemed.
How old the crowd participants were.
These people are serious and they aren’t doing this because someone had a ‘good idea’.
This was about their lives as they are now and they laid it on the line.
I thought about how ‘police’ look the same the world over. And then felt cynical, even though I know it is true...
I thought about where I am now, in this beautiful forest.
Do I honor those people in the video more, by being completely where I am now, or by joining them?
Do I deserve my experience? Do they deserve theirs?
It’s hard to believe anybody deserves the beatings they received.
A lot of my experience the last few months has left me feeling the same way about being in the beauty and the peace here, ‘I don’t deserve it’.
Funny, isn’t it?

“Every god that’s been known, every angel in the sky, gurus everywhere I go, and no one can tell me why...’

Somebody told me a week or so ago that I am supposed to ‘want’ something.
Since then, I’ve felt like – really, I haven’t got a fucking clue what I ‘should’ want.
We all got a long list of shit we don’t want though, don’t we?
The question, “what do I want?”, leaves me with the same feeling I’ve always had since I was a kid when someone asked what I want for my birthday.
‘Surprise me’.
I guess that is what I would say now to the question of what I want in the world, just like when I was a kid, for my birthday -
‘surprise me... please’.

Take care,
Steve

Steve's blog

4 Comments

Comments

Who Are They?

NAYKD POET — Jun 01, 2011

Over the last decade in particular, mass demonstrations are met with increasingly brutal force no matter where in the world that it happens. In this time I ask myself: `who are these individuals that are made to feel separate from the rest of humanity, armed and protected with their ominous, dark riot gear, wielding hardwood batons, who with seemingly little regard for the injury that they impose upon their fellow civilians?' I cannot in my mind comprehend the mental disconnect that these men and women must make in order to be so brutal and by whose order. To whom and by what mechanism, do these thousands of `fellow human beings' assign their allegiance and with such brutal and insane force beat down the un-armed who are expressing their human and civil right to protest what they believe to be a `wrong' inflicted upon them. Is the security of a `job' as an enforcer that more important if it means cracking open someone's head and possibly killing them - just for a pay cheque? It has to be more! What mind-control is imposed upon these humans that they can divorce themselves from the brutality of their actions. As long as their are those who are willing to serve up their humanity to support and protect the tyranny of the stolen powers of the elite - this world will NEVER be right.

I wrote this poem some years back to reflect this sentiment:

Jack Boots and Batons

In jack boots and wielding batons
They come a hundred strong
Their march echoing the throng
With fierce voice chanting the song:

`Back off - get to where you belong’

Their aim – to intimidate
Their strength – how governments legislate
Their goal – to disseminate
Those who protest and congregate

Black clouds of dust block the light
To keep peering eyes and cameras from sight
To witness those who attempt to fight
For what they know is their right

The strong arm that intimidates
Being their best tactic of late
Is fuel to the rebellion to seal their fate
Turning a dictatorship into a freedom state

I was thinking the same thing...

Salma — Jun 03, 2011

Thank you for saving me the trouble of having to write that because I do not see that idea expressed often enough. The problem is with the enforcers. If it weren't for them, no one would take the rulers seriously for obvious reasons. What I want is for all enforcers to experience MDMA and break through their separation to find the love they have within themselves for all of Life, including humanity. Please, let them wake up and find a divine Love in their hearts that unifies them with Life; it's the only solution I can think of that will work.

"Them"

Ian — Jun 01, 2011

@Naykd Poet

I have wondered this same thing before, though sometimes I get caught up in the dichotomy of "us" being people that think of the world in similar terms that I do, and "them" being other people that oppose or at least do not tolerate those same views. The way you frame the question of "Who are those people?" struck a chord with me because I have thought recently about how important it is that people (myself included) interact with others that have different perspectives and backgrounds so that we can learn about one another and thus make violence and ignorance more difficult to accept and perpetuate.

It is important to reduce that filtering process of thinking of other people as "them" and accepting that we must all strive to come together, especially with those people that we disagree with or that have hurt us. The power of knowledge and first-hand experience is incredible and too often understated.

Thanks for the important reminder that we must all try to come together no matter the rifts between us.

"If you want to improve, be content to be thought foolish and stupid."
-Epictetus

nice comments.

Steve — Jun 01, 2011

Thank you both.
I sent this out to some email friends as well yesterday.
The first couple I've heard from have oddly enough assumed I was in a crisis.
Funny.

I do agree with you Ian, maybe even more extremely than you agree with yourself - hard to say. I think I am seeing myself no matter who or what I am looking at. Further, I live in this space of accepting that person over 'there' is 'me' as much as this goofy guy I see in the mirror everyday. As Bono wrote, and Johnny Cash sang better, 'We're One, but we're not the same, we've got to carry each other and do it again'.

There's something despairing about that thought at the same time it's as if this is the only saving grace to the whole experience. It's just 'me', 'us', enjoying ourselves. We'll never be the same. I agree with you we can learn from one another, but that really is a two-way street isn't it? Doesn't their need to be some reciprocation for it to actually happen?

Governments, armies and police aren't really interested in sharing and comparing experiences and perspectives, as far as I can tell. I don't think it's dualistic or overly negative to pay attention to what the behavior of others implies. And the behavior of our governments and leaders in the business world definitely implies that they do not feel our liberties are in their best interests. Commandeering resources and consolidating power always seems to be more important than people and their rights to pursue happiness, to them.

I have come to believe (for myself anyway) that the only viable and effective way to live in these bodies is with curiosity - childlike, innocent curiosity. It took me several years to figure out how to do that on a practical, day-to-day level. Developing that curiosity requires one to apply some fairly rigorous, tenacious thought and maintain it in certain situations, such as the one in the video as well as around the world.

Your suggestion Ian, as well as my way of living tends to work locally doesn't it? I mean, I do what I do and how I do it because I get the confirmation this works. Based on what you say, I would bet you do also.

But then there are these situations such as what we can observe in this video all around the world. When I hit the 'bottom' in my personal life and started the process of finding a new identity within, I couldn't have imagined any experience being tougher than what I went through. This seems a common experience for many and I am personally grateful for the experience of my low spot.

But I didn't go through anything close to what these people in the video go through. The thing about my perspective is that I feel we are all in service to one another. Living this perspective though puts us on paths of conundrums.

When do we allow people their respective experiences and when do we engage and 'take it personally' (so to speak)? How do we as humans unite, when what causes one group to go out and face the riot police is a radically different issue than what motivates another group to do the same thing?

I suppose if I was trying to say or suggest anything specific with this post, it was that what would really surprise me would be if we (everyone) agreed that our common humanity is THE issue. THAT is what binds us together, not any manufactured issue... And every other issue on our planet today is exactly that: manufactured, created by us. This is clear with only a little bit of thought.

And yet, it would surprise me if it happened.
But I like surprises!!!

Blessings,
Steve