We always talk about alternative ways of doing things, alternative ways of life, alternative solutions, alternative worlds, and alternative ways of being in our world.
Thereafter we go out in the world. We disturb one another. We shake up the environment. All efforts to realise these alternatives.
“Do you not know? Have you not heard?” (borrowed this from Isaiah 40:28. It’s so cool to say.)
WE are the alternative.
We are nature’s alternative. The only species aware of alternatives.
Each one of us is an alternative to one another. And alternative of “the Great Source” whatever that is to you.
We are 8 billion (and still counting) alternatives and possibilities realised.
We are not incentives for one another to change, but to inform and remind one another.
(Do I sound like a ‘Guru’ or someone whose parents have just compared to someone else’s “perfect” child?)
It is true though.
We are alternatives to each other.
In which way though?
One (second tier differences)
You could be that homeless guy. You could be that billionaire. You could be that single mother. You could be that newly wed. You could be that suicidal person.
Two (first tier differences)
You could be that Arab. You could be that blind person. You could be that athlete. You could be that musician. You could be that skinwalker, and it goes on.
Just because you aren’t living that reality doesn’t change anything.
These possibilities reside in our environment as real as they exist in our imagination. After all imagination is the mother of alternatives.
What each one could be in many different circumstances, conditions, and bodies.
When one says, “If Beethoven did it, I can do it too.” He walks this line never imagining it to be TRUE that Beethoven could have been him. Because like our time, our imagination leads with greatness and ‘novelty’.
But true doesn’t really matter in the face of ‘real’.
Real is:
I don’t want to be that homeless guy. I want to be that billionaire.
Real is tangible in varying degrees. True is a world away.
Then why is it that:
When everyone wants to be a billionaire, all of a sudden it is not realistic.
When everyone becomes homeless suddenly there’s no homelessness.
When you turn up crying that your love left you for someone better, what does your friend say? “That’s not true, what other people do has nothing to do with you.”
Suddenly, ‘true’ is within grasp to save us from the real.
Aspire if you dare, strive if you desire, survive when you must…
Not at the cost of someone else.
This doesn’t mean take responsibility for the world. Each person should take responsibility for their part. How they bruise their alternatives.
After all, just because you can doesn’t mean you should.
Say, if you could, would you give that homeless guy your life and take his? You think because he looks like that he must FEEL pretty bad too. Would you do it with the billionaire? You imagine if he looks like that he must FEEL pretty good too.
Would that homeless guy FEEL good as you and how you live? Would the billionaire FEEL bad as you?
Live your life in a way that anyone would love to live it no matter who they are.
Feel. Feel. Feel. Feel.
That is the glue that keeps us together. Without it we fall apart and disappear.
What is the super glue?
Love.
Before you roll your eyes, love is truly the only way back home to ourselves.
Before you smile, our situation is too dire.
However, it is not impossible.
Without the pressure of being perfect it can be done.
It goes like this:
When someone in the neighbourhood throws a party, you go in and out of the house return and getting things. Other people do the same. Till dawn.
You keep revisiting the happy moment in conversation, leftover cake or food, when you meet in the road, when something happens that reminds you of the party. Days go by and you forget the party but the gentle feelings of goodwill stick around.
When you fight. The fight ends. You return to your house. Spectators go home. Your neighbour returns to his home. Then coming back out becomes a chore. You hide in your house. You hide behind an angry face and other wounded aggressive behaviour. You get out of the house with ill-will stuck to your face and posture. You wear a mask.
We are such cowardly hypocrites. And we would accept that we are savages if we weren’t cowards.
When we say we’re fighters, we have armies and weapons but we never fight for love, to love? Our compulsive poking at each other, our eyes glazed over with the glitter of the perfection to come after our analyses.
How dare you store an enemy in someone else’s body?
Love might be our biggest fight, after all.
We just have to admit it.
At a party. Not the battle field.
“I’m angry at you because you don’t love me.”
We have to admit it to be able to laugh about it. To laugh at the absurdity of our FEELINGS without injurying the earnestness behind them.
“I’m sad because you don’t love me.” You chuckle. The speaker holds their peace until you stop laughing.
“Okay.”
“I’m afraid because you don’t love me.”
“Okay.”
“Why do you feel like I don’t love you?”
Gentle with the knowledge that knowing and doing better takes many lifetimes.
“Why do you feel like I don’t love you?”
“Because, because, because…” Each person struggles to find their reason.
The party starts. We go back and forth in our individual pain and joy easily until we find a reason that makes us drunk or sobers us up.
“Oh! I got one! Because you don’t feed me.” They sigh with the admission.
“I got mine too!” they pause, suddenly apprehensive. “Because you don’t give me your approval.” Their lips tremble with the realisation.
The flood gate breaks, and the reasons start to tumble out. It’s chaos!
“Because I don’t do as you want me to.”
“Because you wanted a boy.”
“Because you don’t believe me.”
“Because I made a mistake.”
“Because you left.”
On and on.
Eventually, it quiets down.
It doesn’t solve everything, but it’s easier to get through the other stuff together.
“I love you starting today,” someone says.
A million light years away from Earth…
The Aliens start freaking out.
