When the hurricane hit New Orleans and the levees broke and the land was flooded… and what seemed to many (including myself) the slow response of the government namely FEMA to help… I was torn apart with just one single question: WHY?
During that awful time I created a sculpture in Second Life, as a way to channel my feelings I guess. Sculpting in prim (or primitives – the building blocks of Second Life) is not easy. A lot also depends on the textures used on the prims as well. I don’t think I did half bad. At least it was mission accomplished: I felt a bit better after getting what was in my heart, out somewhere in the universe, be it virtual or otherwise.
My problem is this. I’ve been asking WHY my whole life. I found out the the subjects at school I was having difficulty with, where always the ones that never got the answer WHY to my satisfaction. Algebra was a chore until at Math Camp For Girls (thanks Ma and Da for sending me!) we were taught the WHY of it all. Equations made sense to me then. They fit into the fabric of the world.
You may think that kids don’t understand things like “the fabric of the world”, but its my experience that kids understand it better than adults. Somewhere along the way we get that nonesense beaten or schooled or suppressed out of us. And we see things incorrectly. Pity that. I’m just fortunate that I was able to hold onto that view of things, and that I was exposed to things that supported that view, instead of considering it trivial, or nonsensical. Lucky me.
The rest of the world however, since unfortunately for US its ruled by adults, seems to have gone to hell in a handbasket. I want to know WHY.
WHY is it that the two (or maybe three) nations, or religions or peoples or WHATEVER have a certain phrase in common. And its a powerful phrase, mind you. And its Greeting phrase. And its a phrase that Blesses those who are Greeting each other. And yet… These peoples have been at hammers and tongs with each other for Ages.
Shalom aleichem
As-Salamu Alaykum
Peace Be With You
Peace. There goes that word again. WHY is it so hard to do? I greet you with wishes and Blessings of Peace. Yet my hand is also raised to you in war, hatred, confusion, strife and death. WHY?
We are taught as children that we must SHARE. Me, me, me, mine, want, must have, gimme, MINE. Those are SELFISH things, and you must learn to share your toys with others. These are the building blocks of civilization are they not? I could talk about sharing resources, and such things and then I’d be called a Hippy Communist.
I really dislike lables. Some ideas are good ones. Many good ideas have been taken to extremes, warped, distorted, perverted, changed and then we slap a lable on it and when someone comes along trying to do the original thought: well they get knocked down good and well don’t they?
WHY is it that damn near every person who has come into the world and spoken of Peace and Love and Sharing and Getting Along With Each Other has been killed? WHY is it that we do this? What is wrong with us? Are we THAT lost?
Should a messiah or a buddha emerge in this day and age they’d be stuck inside a behavioral institution in a New York Minute. Or killed right off. Perhaps we’ve already missed the modern day Messengers. Perhaps we’ve killed them off, or locked them up already.
Now look who’s laughing now? Maybe that explains partly WHY we are doing these things to each other, to our world, to our children. We’ve lost our path and locked up our Pathfinders. Shame to think so. However the one thing that always keeps me GOING is: Hope.
Buddhist teaching says that we are all buddhas. That we can attain Enlightenment just as we are. The good, the bad, the pretty, the ugly, the beautiful. The lotus flower blooms in the muddy swamp. The lotus flower is the representation of Buddhism in general, because of that. The Lotus Sutra is the highest of the Buddhist teachings.
So I always have Hope. I Hope that we haven’t locked up or killed our Messengers. If I know my teachings right, I am a messenger. You are a messenger. So what is our message? What are we teaching our childeren? Ourselves? What are our actions speaking so loud that words don’t matter? What are our pens doing that are so much mightier than any sword?
I cried off and on for almost two days straight. I thought it was in response to a rather deep book I was reading. Could have been. I always weep uncontrollably while reading that book, and especially at the end. Heck, I’m sniffling now thinking about it. However. I found out later that my days of crying where linked up to the days of horror and death in Mumbai India. Coincidence? Perhaps.
Perhaps I’m in tune with things and I don’t realize it. But then I say to myself, people die horribly all over the world all the time. How come I don’t just cry all the damn time then? Again I have no answers to these questions. But I do wonder.
I’m tired of crying. I’m tired of my heart breaking and aching. I remember what I wrote at the end of 2007, and the beginning of 2008. I had My Wish. And I wrote it down. What have I done towards those ends in this past year?
I have worked hard to forge a better relationship with my Mother. I have almost lost a friend, but hope to salvage that relationship. I feel closer than ever before to one of my siblings. I have learned some deep things about myself – some not so pretty, some so beautiful that its stunning to me. Has the world changed in a year? Yes it has. Has it changed for the better? Yes and No.
My particular world has changed mostly for the better, and there is yet still much to be worked on. The World in general has gotten worse, but here at the end of this Year Of My Wish, I see Hope. I see a Change. And yet so many are being killed and are dying still. And for what? Tell me WHY.
Maybe then I’ll be able to sleep at night. I have lived in a waking nightmare and a sleeping dream of dread in these past three or four days. My feet have strayed from the path I set myself. Perhaps during that time I lost my Hope. Oh please if that is so, I want it back. I’m so tired. I’m so unhappy.
And I don’t even have the luxury to know if those are my own feelings, or if I’ve let slip the leash I’ve had on my illness, and the chemicals inside my brain and body are speaking for me. Sometimes you get just simply tired of the Fight. I have to Fight each and every day. Maybe I just got tired. I’m not sure, but the one thing that kept swirling around inside me was: WHY?
And so I wrote this. And so I try to feel better. And so I try to understand what’s happening to me. One minute I’m filled with utter Joy. The next I’m pressed down with Horror and Despair. I never wish that I wasn’t Who I Am, but in these past days I’ve almost wished that I didn’t have this daily struggle.
That I could know my true Heart. My True Self and be absolutely Sure that it was Me. If I could rip out this illness and stomp it out of existense: I would. But I can’t. But I’m losing myself and my Way, and yet my heart still beats, and yet I still have Hope, and yet I know that I will be OK. But I just don’t know how or when.
Please. Just. Stop. The. Killing. I just can’t STAND it. I don’t understand WHY and there’s no theological or political reasoning that you can tell me that will make any sense. We are so precious. We are so few. Yet we destroy each other without a thought to what it is we are actually doing.
Some have asked this question: Are you willing to die for your beliefs?
I ask this question: Are you willing to kill for them?
Especially when your belief system is so damn similar to that of those you are killing. Peace be with you. Do you even believe that simple Blessing and Greeting?
Don’t come to me with your Peace. I’ll have none of it. You SHOW me your Peace and then we’ll see. You show me that you can BUILD instead of DESTROY and then we’ll talk. You show me you UNDERSTAND what it actually means to Bless me and Greet me with Peace.
Shame on you and all of us. Shame on me.
WHY.
