“Like everyone else, I want to remember how good things can be, when you didn’t necessarily think they were. There’s always something going on. And then ... there are times of true crisis, like now. Whether or not we are touched by illness, or just bearing witness to a world gone mad, it feels heavy. Fear is like that. It robs us of our joyful nature, and pretends it’s the end. Some of us have lived our whole lives with trauma, and find nothing much new about this iteration, but that it took so long to unfold into public awareness, this realization that there’s a battle going on, to sink or save what we have come to know as humanity. We’ve been so brainwashed to believe everything is our fault, which is gas-lighting, done by controlling interests. Whether you are married to someone who continually twists reality or it’s just the television and our trusted news sources that are doing it, let’s admit that being manipulated is the true pandemic. You’re never good enough, you are not recycling enough, or being nice enough online. Your refusal to vote for the lesser of two psychopathic presidential candidates is the object of shame and derision. You stink, so you need products to make sure no one ever smells you. You’re shut out of your lifeline accounts for incorrectly answering a security question. The bank thinks you’re a credit risk. Your doctors assure you that pills will get you back on track. When you go for a walk up the road, you hope you don’t see anyone because you look tired. You’re aging. We’re told that’s no good. People took sides during your divorce and decided you were scum. And you didn’t fight to correct the record because it’s a losing battle, isn’t it. There are years that go by when no one really knows you. Because you don’t let them in, confused by the shortfall of both talking and sex. Neither seems to create understanding anymore, and you don’t know why. Even nature turned a blind eye to your suffering, when ticks started to pop up on every blade of grass and fragrant rose bush. Still, you clipped and tended to your flock, because that’s what you know how to do. You know how to keep relating to living things in a caring way, and supporting life. You came down here to do just that. To stroke and to soothe. To gently prop up the weary. To sit silently in the rooms of death, with hope. To lead the wakening children into secret forest dwellings, and safe houses of innocent play. You knew it without having to be taught, and when they tried to crush you with their ignorance, your light was not extinguished. The inheritance of human compassion is more valuable than gold. So let’s scrape ourselves off the floor and rise one more day. The world is dark, and yet luminous where we are. I can’t let go of any, who love.”
