Is there still time to wake up and se

I always knew I wanted to write a book, tell a story. What genre I couldn’t have guessed; I just knew I wanted to write.  Books were always a place where one didn’t have to go anywhere in order to get somewhere, a bit of an oxymoron wouldn’t you say.  But simply by opening a book a new adventure would begin and who knew where the journey would lead.  I always felt sad and still do when I reach that last chapter and know that the adventure I have been on is nearly at a close.  The feeling is like that of a vacation you have long been anticipating and suddenly the vacation is over and you are home once more.  The same could be said about life.  We are on a journey and at some point, like a book, it has to end.

Life, when enough years have passed and can be reviewed in hindsight, takes on the form of a  well-read book.  Sometimes looking back it may unfold as a series of short happy stories. Another’s life may read like the great novel War and Peace.  But never can we say that throughout our lifetime we have no stories to tell.  Some if they put pen to paper would discover their life was a three-lane highway, a never-ending stretch with no curves, twists or roadblocks to manoeuvre.  Others would find that their life was a continuous narrow road winding its way around the tallest most treacherous mountain.  Their life story when they finally read the book would be one of pure awe seeing in retrospect that they had the endurance to survive the most daunting of hurtles.

As children, we are young and innocent, not yet touched by the bitter and harsh realities of life.  Our rose coloured glasses have yet to be removed and before us is a lifetime of adventure and excitement, each day filled to the brim with the joy of simply being alive.  Of course that is only if you are fortunate to have a loving family and the care and comfort of a good home.  For some there are never any rose coloured glasses and the truth of life reveals itself long before it should.

I have often wondered why someone doesn’t write a book about the unhappiness in life, the challenges that are so hard to overcome, and the emptiness that exists in todays so called bright and shinning world?  Maybe that is why my destiny has led me to writing: maybe it is my purpose to give voice to the fact that life isn’t always beautiful but instead a never-ending series of overcoming odds and survival depends on whether we are made of the Right Stuff!

Isn’t it time someone finally addressed what “reality” truly is!  Some, probably most, will not like it!  In today’s modern world experiencing negativity is akin to conspiring with the devil.  We are inundated with books and life coaches preaching to us that regardless what pain and angst we are feeling a Positive Attitude must prevail and if we buy into this concept we SHALLl OVERCOME!  I wonder just how many of those “positive thinkers” have really experienced unrelenting enduring traumatic hardships. Probably not many, as they revel in the riches they have made off the feelings of guilt they have created in those of us who need to feel our pain and suffering and the pain and suffering of the world.

I cannot help but think back to Rwanda, 1994 when an estimated 800,000 people were massacred.  How much positive energy could there possibly have been.  Would New Age thinking have worked under those circumstances.  Can we even consider that there was optimistic thinking during 1939 to 1945 when 50 million Jews were slaughtered for just being born Jewish.  Did the world learn it’s lesson, of course not!  Still global issues permeate our world, homelessness, starvation, war, terrorism and perhaps if we  don’t change or adjust our attitude the worst case scenario of all, the loss of our planet that we have so generously and quickly abused.

Let’s not forget about all the pain and suffering right at our  own doorstep. What about parents who have just buried their only child killed by a drunk driver or families that have been torn apart by divorce, children abused by people who are supposed to love and nurture them?  The book I will write in essence will give voice to those people who are tired of hiding their true and honest feelings. What a great joy it would give me to let others know that there is no shame in feeling negative, angry and sad when they have been overwhelmed with grief and tragedy.  If we are not allowed to feel our pain how can we ever overcome it?

Will I be persecuted if I have the nerve to write that LIFE IS NOT BEAUTIFUL!  Take a good look around you at all the happy faces.  I think you will find they are in short supply.  What I see is a world overflowing with unhappiness and yet we do not have the courage to take off the blinders and see it for what it really is.  Most people are living in glasshouses that are balancing precariously on the edge of a cliff.  Do they understand that at any moment the house could be blown over the edge and shatter into a million little pieces.

Why, if Life is Beautiful, is our world filled with addictions.  Gang wars are rampant as members kill one another over the boundaries of their drug territories.  Detoxification units are overflowing with middle class, middle-aged people addicted to prescription drugs in never before seen numbers.  Anorexia and bulimia, words we didn’t even know existed twenty-five years ago.  Casinos filled with lonely seniors gambling away their pensions.  How about the young people loosing their souls to the cavernous mouth of the slot machine? Did our governments not know what they were doing when they legalized gambling?  Of course they did, they knew it would be just another tax on the poor.  Why if everyone is so happy in today’s consumer driven world, is everyone looking for something they cannot find?  It is time to face reality and admit that this earth we live on can be a harsh ugly place where we live in constant struggle until the day we die. This will only continue unless we can figure out what the message is that we are missing, what is it in that message that we just don’t get? 

I truly believe that unless we change how we function in our lives happiness and peace will only be given to us in tiny bits and pieces.  We will only be allowed sporadic glimpses of what true happiness really is.  As I write I try remembering the last time I felt peace, the last time I felt real joy and to be honest it eludes me.  Maybe it was the birth of my children?  Maybe it was when I fell in love with someone new who I thought would add joy to my life only to find out their life too was filled with unhappiness and disharmony.  I am tired of living a lie, tired of a society that so easily buys into trite new age clichés about the power of positive thinking when in reality they should be espousing the need for positive “action”. Maybe then we can really change what our world has become and we can stand tall and be proud to be part of a race, not just a white race or black race but one race, “the human race”.

Do you see giving, loving people full of joy and happiness surrounding you? If so, you are in a minority.  Everyday people struggle with the lasting affects of adultery, divorce, financial ruin, businesses failing, homes lost and the worst of all, disease.  Peak into the church and what do we see but perverted men who have ruined the lives of so many children with their abuse of power.  Beautiful children sexually and physically abused by those they looked up to, those who represent the holiest of holy-God.

What about marriage and the sacred institution it is supposed to be.  Statistics indicate that adultery affects every 2.7 couples.  It is estimated that fifty-three percent of all people will have one or more affairs during their married lifetime.  The truth of the matter is human beings are not monogamous by nature thus leading to a lot of very unhappy unfulfilled marriages. It takes honesty, work and dedication to go against naturee but for some reason we don’t want to put that effort forth. 

Walk through all the personal care homes and SEE the men and women sitting patiently waiting for those who will not come.  They are lost souls that cannot escape from a place that is keeping them tied to pain and suffering.  Where are the kids they raised, the kids they sacrificed for, the grandchildren they babysat for, where are they, they do not come.  I am sure some of them must have taught their children love and compassion yet where is it.  How could so many of what used to be our matriarchs and patriarchs sit heart broken and filled with emptiness in that long wait for death still holding on to a shred of hope that those they sacrificed their lives for will remember them and be there in their time of need.

What can we do to be honest about what life really is about?  Isn’t it time to break free from our glass bubbles and see the harsh realities that are rampant in our world?  Maybe if we reach-out and touch the lost, the homeless, the sick, the old, the abused, the lonely, maybe then we will find the true meaning of life.  Maybe by reaching outside ourselves we will we find the true meaning of peace and happiness inside ourselves? 

Perhaps if we all take off our blinders and unbury our heads from the sand we will find what we are searching for.  Don’t reach for the off button on the remote control of your 52”plasma television when starving children are crying out for your help.  When you see devastation around the world like earthquakes, Tsunamis, floods, tornados, feel it, feel their suffering and then reach out to them.

When you pass a homeless person on the street don’t turn your eyes away.  Think about him, feel his pain, wonder about what tragedy brought him to such a place in life.  Let go of the judgement.  Perhaps by a twist of fate it could have been you.  It is time for us as a society to break free of the desire to have and instead have the desire to give.  It is time to reach into our hearts and feel compassion and empathy.  Give a hand up to those that need.

If you know someone that has endured pain and suffering don’t offer glib clichés about thinking positive, instead do something positive.  Positive thinking isn’t terrible it is only terrible when we don’t turn it into positive action! Walk with those that are hurt and suffering and feel their pain so that they don’t feel isolated and alone. So many in this new millennium espouse about the pitfalls of negativity yet by doing so they are telling us not to allow ourselves to feel.  Allowing negativity into our life lets us feel our anger and our pain so that it can be released.  We must be allowed to feel our unhealthy emotions so that we can move on to a healthier place.

I believe that the universe is begging us to change our course but I don’t think it is doing it simply through positive thinking.  Instead we must take positive action and have faith in the power of one.  You can make change happen, I can make change happen and if each one of us takes a positive action perhaps then peace, love and happiness will prevail.

I truly hope that in the end when I get to read my book of life it will tell the story of someone who cared,someone who saw others pain and suffering and walked through it with them.  Someone who  truly believed in the power of one.

“Author unknown” but I quote: “In reality, pain is the law of equilibrium, of education. Suffering should be seen as a necessity, as an agent of development and progress. Its effects are beneficial, but only those who have felt it personally can understand this. It is very difficult to make people understand that suffering is good. Disgrace and trials spring wells within us of a new and more beautiful life. Sadness and suffering make us see, hear and feel thousands of things, great and small, that a happy person cannot perceive; the average person is too caught up in the material world.
Those who have not suffered cannot understand these things because they only value the superficial. There is a lack of greatness in their hearts and they are small-minded. Misfortune and anguish are necessary to give the soul its moral beauty and awake its sleeping sentiments.
Pain is not reserved for the guilty. In our world, the honorable suffer as much as the wicked. This is because the virtuous soul is more sensitive as it is on a higher evolutionary step, and also because it often seeks pain out, knowing its value in the evolutionary process.
There are souls that come to this world only to be examples of greatness in the face of suffering We praise Christ, Socrates, Joan of Arc, but what of the many others who die daily in the name of service or love and are forgotten? Their examples are not lost; they illuminate the lives of the few who knew them”.