“The only way to deal with an unfree world is to become so absolutely free that your very existence is an act of rebellion.” Albert Camus
How exactly do we do this?
How do we become so free that the lives we lead are a daily, evolving rebellion to those who want to cut us down and off from the grace that should be available to all?
And is our best opportunity to evolve in this manner always have to come as a reaction to an unfree world?
I am kind of getting that we might need all the unfreeness in the world to liberate us from the shackles that bind and constrict. I mean, for me anyway, I have never been good at remembering how tethered I am until I attempt to walk away and can’t.
Right now a great portion of our America is bereft and lost. A great many of us feel like the rug was just pulled out from under us. Like we cannot fathom how we got here...again. It is like a bad dream you wake up from but then find yourself living in that same nightmare, but worse, a few years later.
I am part of the masses that feel saddened, despondent, confused and upset. I feel like we just took a giant step backward. I feel very unsafe in this chicken shit new world order that is about to unfold. I feel scared for my daughter and my son and how they are going to navigate in a world where decency, integrity and humanity have lost all value to the powers that be. I do not understand the red tidal wave that now owns us.
So I feel that the world I live in right now is the most unfree I have ever known. Yesterday I heard many different people talking about Nazi Germany and Hitler’s rise to power. I mean I get it. There are glaring similarities. I guess hatred and biogtry and fear will always find a home in this world.
And there isn’t much I can do now. I mean I voted for a safer world. I did my civic duty. I participated in the process and I lost. My team lost. A valiant up hill battle...it is hard to win against someone who has no regard for the truth and has lulled the masses into thinking he gives a shit about them. They will see. Someone like him is incapable of caring about anyone. A mad assent to power obviates the ability to feel deeply anything but what you espouse is critical to the cause.
So I find myself in this place where all I can do is to make myself as absolutely free as I possibly can. Free of hate. Free of fear. Free of rhetoric. Free of the desire for revenge and retribution. I do not want my feelings to the contrary to chain me to his cause, his power grabs, his demented ideas and beliefs.
So for me, as we endure the next four years I plan to spend my time working hard to get so absolutely free that every breath I take is an act of sedition and rebellion. I claim this land I stand upon as my own. And I plant my own flag right here on this hallowed ground that will refuse to be owned, cowed, belittled and enslaved. I will not hate even though there are so very many things that are going to go down that will stoke the flames of hatred in my soul.
I am going to love. Loving is the only way I have ever known to become free. Loving without bounds, or reason, or approval. I am just going to love myself and all around me, whether they believe as me or not. I am not going to be a doormat, but I will not allow all the hate mongering to touch my soul, my essence or my spirit. I do not understand the world I am currently living in. I just don’t. But I do see all the unfreeness that just transpired as an opportunity for me to continue to practice getting myself so absolutely free that everything I do, everything I say, every breath I take is an act of rebellion.
For every action there is an equal and opposite reaction...so sayeth the physicists in this world. And I plan to ride the coming blue tide. I plan to dedicate myself to being a voice for love, and kindness and truth and veracity and peace. I have no place for his kind of humanity to land within me and that is the only way I can assure myself that I shall never be compromised. Never succumb to the conventions that abound today.
I cannot change him. Or you. Or them. But I have absolute control over me (for now). I do not need reproductive rights myself, so I am above all the bullshit that is about to come. So I can help others. I can be a safe space for women who need support, funds, help and a safe place to land. I can make myself into a beacon of support for others who are not so lucky.
And in so doing, I can become so absfuckinglutely free that I become a rebellion that builds upon itself every motherfucking day for the next four years. And I can and will support the growth of that rebellion in everyone I meet, everywhere I go, and in all the I do. Because in the face of fascist gamesmanship, I believe that love and truth and honor and respect, not money, power and greed shall ultimately prevail. And even if I am wrong, and the world becomes an outgrowth of hatred and bigotry and lies, I can and will fuel my own rebellion from within and never surrender to the red tidal wave that threatens all, perhaps the people have been swept away most of all. Someone needs to stand on the shore with life perservers...because so many are about to drown.
And I can pray for peace, love, understanding and tolerance. First for my own tortured soul and then for yours...
Again...still.
Except change 1876 to 2024...
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