What a curious sort is man. We are always saying how much we want peace and harmony in our lives, yet we do everything possible to prevent it. Think about this for a moment. There are two driving forces to having a "successful" life, fame and fortune. We hear this so often. He has gone off to seek his fame and fortune. Yet, when you think about it, these two driving forces are at odds with what we claim to desire, peace and harmony. For in seeking out fame and fortune, we have to compete with others in order to amass that fortune or bring notoriety to ourselves. This is not to say that we don't, at times, work together towards that common goal, but for the most part, it is a solitary pursuit. These two are like the cocaine of life though. Once you have that taste, you want more and more until you can no longer control the desire, it controls you. How many times have we heard about Hollywood heroes who have meltdowns despite having the fame and fortune? How many times have we heard about the bad behaviour of the rich and famous, or the power mongers of our society?
How can people who supposedly have so much, be so unhappy? I don't know how many times I have heard someone say that if they had their money, they wouldn't act like that. Want to bet? Ego drives our desire to be known, to be more than what we are. Ego is never satiated. It is always hungry for more and more attention. It is a gluttony of the mind. We acknowledge this, even if unwittingly in our terms, he has a big head, she is full of herself. We would like to believe that if we were in the same position that we would not act in such a way. Yet, are we sure we wouldn't? And why are these people unhappy? Could it be that as ego grows it begins to take any criticism or negative comment as a personal attack?
Fortune is much the same in that it is an unquenchable thirst. Once we have tasted we desire more. We are driven by the desire to amass. The more we amass, the more we feel we need to protect that which we have amassed. Often times, we put more energy into protecting our things than we do our friends and families. The further along this path we go, the less we see others and their needs and only have eyes for things that we covet? Why else would someone with millions of dollars spend hundreds of thousands to retrofit a jetliner so that it is like an Airstream in the sky?
I remember for myself as a young man thinking if only I could make $15,000 a year, I would be set. Once I made it there, it became $20,000 and so on and so forth, until I came to realize that as my income grew, so did my desire for things. So I was stuck on a treadmill that there is no end to. No matter how much you make, your desires grow to match and you are always chasing the carrot. Once I stopped needed to have things, my need to increase my income also abated. I found that I could continue to live on the same amount with maybe the occasional adjustment for inflation.I found the need to compete abated also. I was all ready pretty sure that I wasn't destined for fame and fortune, so my ego was pretty much in check.
So let's say for the moment, that we come to the realization that fame and fortune are like a drug that we will never get enough of. Suppose we break our addiction to this, can we also change the way we deal with others?
One of the needs of ego is to promote ourselves, to make ourselves seem more important than others. We sometimes do this at the expense of others by trying to diminish them in some way. How many times do we hear about how someone stepped on others on their way to the top. Of course, getting to the top brings along the baggage of insecurity that someone is going to topple you. So you demean those you feel threatened by so as to raise yourself up. Bullies are notorious for this. The most insecure people are bullies. They need to put others down in order to make themselves feel good.
It is this desire or need to elevate ourselves that brought about bigotry and prejudice. We seek out that differentiating quality in others whether it is their race, creed, sex, sexual orientation, or even blemishes or deformities. We use that difference so as to say, see you are not like me so I am better than you. You then set out to diminish them in some way. The Civil Rights movement came about because African Americans had had enough. Many whites believed blacks to be inferior yet, do we not now have a black President? Native Americans in this country were thought to be uneducated savages, yet wasn't it Chief John Ross of the Cherokee who took the State of Georgia to the US Supreme Court and won? Of course, it was a bittersweet defeat as President Andrew Jackson told the court, they made the ruling, now try to enforce it, and then ordered the removal of the Cherokee and others to the Indian Territory. This march in the dead of winter in which many lost their lives came to be known as the Trail of Tears. When you look at all the inventions in Asia including the transistors that miniaturized the radio, how can anyone deny intelligence there also. Just because we are different, does not make us less. We must be careful of the yardstick we use to measure. There is a prophesy, I believe it was Hopi, in which it talks of the four races being sent off in four directions to learn different things. At a time in the future, all the colors would come back together and share the wisdom of what they found and this would bring about a time of peace and harmony for all people. Yet, if we do not open our hearts to each other, how can we come together? There are also those who follow the crystal skulls that believe that these skulls when brought together will release great knowledge that will help us in the future. They will only come together when we as a people come together. For as long as greed and power blanket the earth, the information imparted could be put to bad use.
If we truly desire peace and harmony in our lifetime, then we as a people need to make a concerted effort to look at the way we treat others. We must learn to accept each other with all our differences. We need to treat others as we would treat ourselves. Not just say the words, but act on them. When the day comes when we don't have to have protests against discrimination like Proposition 8 in California, when we can learn to accept each other as another of ourselves on a different path, a different journey, and respect that, only then will we begin to bring peace and harmony into our lives. We need to take a look at our lives and what we deem important. We need to look at how we treat others, and maybe even take stand with our brothers and sisters in support of equality.
There is a quote that I will paraphrase as I can't remember its source.
"Do not stand in front of me, for I may not follow. Do not stand behind me, for I may not lead.Stand beside me and share the journey."
My heart to your heart, one heart, one spirit.
No comments:
Post a Comment