CITIZENS OF PLANET EARTH UNITE: THE SAFE ZONE

CITIZENS OF PLANET EARTH UNITE: THE SAFE ZONE: Everyone wants to feel safe.  In fact if the truth be known everyone 'needs' to feel safe.  Today in the world as it is, as present...

THE SAFE ZONE

Everyone wants to feel safe.  In fact if the truth be known everyone 'needs' to feel safe.  Today in the world as it is, as presented to us through the eyes and the lens of news media, it's difficult to feel safe.  So many threats coming from so many directions and really not many real solutions to keep us safe from them.  To some it may feel like a crap shoot when one walks out one's door every day as to whether or not one will return in one piece or return at all.  In parts of the world today there is truly a high risk of being injured or killed by complete strangers who may be trying to take over the society in which one lives so that they can control what people think, what people say and what people do.

It would be very easy to go on and on and on listing all of the risks that come with living in today's world, no matter where one lives, however that is extremely counterproductive for any awake and aware human being to do.  We can forego that part of it and instead move on to what we can DO to help ourselves feel safer if we but choose to and that is why I'm writing this.  

Many of us are anxious and afraid.  We don't know what crazy thing is going to happen from one moment to the next today but we can all choose not to fall victim to the fear, the anxiety and the stress that fear and anxiety causes us.  After all in this life it is not what happens to us but it is how we view it and how we weather it that truly matters in the end.  There's going to be bumps in the road and there's going to be truly frightening events that may cause us to return to a place of feelings of insecurity, anxiety and outright fear about the future.  What is really important is that we live in that for as short a time as possible and then go about the business of living without fear and anxiety.

Everyone has their own path to travel in this and what works for one may not work for another.  However it's possible that there are common and simple things to do that will help almost everyone.

First and foremost be aware that being an active participant in this life, in the world around us, doesn't have to mean that we must keep up on every current event.  There are those who seem to be addicted to news and the news media.  Then there are those of us who have in the past lived many years, even decades, without feeling that we need to know everything that's going on around the world or even in our local communities at all times.  As one of those people I can truly attest to the fact that I was harmed in no way by ignoring current events and that I never missed anything that was truly important or that affected myself, my family, my friends or others.  Somehow the news of the things that affect many people and may have a direct effect on us get out without our dedication to keeping up on current events.  The news media is a mixed bag of people dedicated to keeping us all apprised of the events that do truly affect us and of people who are looking for ratings; ratings that translate into profit and profit that translates into wealth.  It's tough to distinguish one from the other so perhaps vastly reducing the amount of news that we view/read and even perhaps eliminating if from our lives would be something we could do to help us feel safer.  After all today it seems that the news media is devoted to bringing us the worst, the most frightening and the most threatening information under the guise of wanting us to be informed so we can be safe.  Safety may not be so much in being informed as it is in being vigilant.  Vigilance is not fear, it is simply being aware of one's surroundings.  We can be very vigilant without feeling afraid.

The second, and perhaps the most effective, way of feeling safe is to DO something.  What we do doesn't have to be huge or even big it simply needs to be focused.  Everyone can do something to help themselves feel safer by reaching out to others and supporting them.  I daresay that anyone who has experienced the 'joy of giving' of themselves would agree that action in this area is not only grounding but is also healing in nature.  Giving can come in many forms; in nearly an infinite number of things that are available to do that helps someone else and also ourselves.  

There is charity giving of course which could be anything from donating money to a cause, to getting involved in a cause, to spearheading one's own cause.  However for some people that's not who they are and for many that's not what they can afford finance or time wise.  But there are many ways to give to others.  Support of a single person or many persons whether in person or on social networking is one option.  Gathering like minded people who have similar interests and even share the same fears and anxieties is another.  Writing, donating, volunteering...it all helps and it all matters.  

We are each individuals who have our own unique gifts to give and allowing anyone at any time to judge us or to suggest that what we have to offer isn't as good as what others do is an obstacle to finding what we can do.  I can promise you that once you find what it is that you can do, that you can contribute, that you have to give and then you do it that is when you have found your path.  Once you've found your path to giving to others you will realize that through your giving you feel safer.  Why do you feel safer?  You feel safer because you've made a connection, because you are a contributor to THE ANSWER that is becoming one humanity that helps and supports one another regardless of color, creed, religion, sexual orientation or any other aspect of our unique humanness that some deem a good reason to divide ourselves. 

We are one humanity and safety is NOT in dividing ourselves to protect ourselves, safety is in connecting ourselves one with the other until we are all connected...

CITIZENS OF PLANET EARTH UNITE: VITAL SANCTUARY

CITIZENS OF PLANET EARTH UNITE: VITAL SANCTUARY: This election, but most of all the election results, have left a lot of us feeling anxious, sad, hopeless, helpless and even a bit depresse...

VITAL SANCTUARY

This election, but most of all the election results, have left a lot of us feeling anxious, sad, hopeless, helpless and even a bit depressed.  We don’t have a clue what the future will bring but plenty of us (myself included even though I try really hard not to) are imagining, based on the campaign platform and the man who was elected, what might happen in the coming months and years in our homeland.  We’ve already seen some violence, on both sides, and some people now feel more emboldened than ever to express their bigotry, xenophobia, homophobia and other things that some of us are that they feel uncomfortable with.  I’m no different than anyone else and I have had days when I feel physically ill, emotionally anxious and even have had to resort to hiding in the ladies room at work to have a good cry. 

Some people are choosing to protest and while I do share their angst and their anxieties I won’t be marching; at least not yet as far as I know.  Some of us are doing our very best to encourage others who share our feelings about this to ramp up on being kind, being caring, being compassionate, being generous and just generally making our day-to-day society less frightening and a whole lot more nurturing.  No matter who chooses what method to cope with this or even to exhibit to others how we are unable to really cope with it we ALL must take care of ourselves.  Stress and anxiety are killers in a very real sense and one of those ‘senses’ is physically.  The longer we indulge in feeling stressed and anxious the less effective our immune system is so the more likely we will become ill and also the more likely it is that we will succumb to some sort of stress/anxiety related heart illness that could lead to heart attack, stroke and more…which could in the end kill us.  So it is in everyone’s best interest to figure out how to deal with this in a way that will save us from a hell of anxiety and stress. 

This last weekend, after a Friday filled with extreme anxiety and sadness and a feeling of helplessness, I made a conscious decision to spend my weekend trying to reclaim peace in my life and in my being.  I was successful for the most part and found very little anxiety and stress begin to creep into my being. So in the spirit of supporting one another I wanted to share some thoughts with the hope that others who are struggling as I have been will find a way to create and then to hold onto calm and peace in their lives.

First and what feels like the most effective thing thus far was a moratorium on news of any kind whatsoever and then pretty close to a moratorium on social media only going onto social media to post something positive in nature.  My husband and I did, out of sheer habit, discuss the ‘current events’ from time to time throughout the weekend but for the most part we tried to steer clear of discussing it in any way, shape or form. We not only needed some 'me/us' time we deserved it, as do we all.

As we dedicated ourselves to keeping negativity out of ourselves, out of our home and out of our relationship I realized what we were doing.  In effect what we were doing was shoring up the ever present but quite invisible ideal of SANCTUARY that our home is to us.  I realized as we made this concerted effort together that when we get caught up in the emotions of a thing, no matter how tragic or important, and we bring it into our homes where we have permission to be our true selves more than anywhere else we are destroying the ONLY sanctuary that most of us have ever had or will ever have. 

Why is sanctuary so important?  Oh let me count the ways…

Sanctuary is our/your one place on the entire planet where you can feel the most at peace.  It’s our/your port in the storm of life and is where we/you go to recharge our/your batteries, lick our/your wounds, find our/your way and is where if one has a significant other we/you can come together and nurture one another. 

So I suppose what I’m suggesting is that no matter how deeply we are getting involved in politics or even just the many discussions occurring on social media about our current situation in the land that we live or how passionately we may feel that we need to be involved that finding, creating or just going back to the place, wherever it may be, that is our sanctuary from all external issues, trials, tribulations and things that stress us where we feel the safest, the most nurtured and the calmest.  We/you surely can fight the good fight but take time for nurturing our/your selves no matter what it takes.  We are all human and we all need a break from whatever is causing us stress or negative feelings.

May peace be with you all in this time of great uncertainty and division.  If we stick together we’ll make it through, I promise, but in the meantime be good to yourselves; you deserve it.

CITIZENS OF PLANET EARTH UNITE: THE VOTES ARE IN AND WE ARE UNSURE OF OUR FUTURE.....

CITIZENS OF PLANET EARTH UNITE: THE VOTES ARE IN AND WE ARE UNSURE OF OUR FUTURE.....: Well the GREAT NEWS about today is that my dog Scooby crapped and had his breakfast this morning (he didn’t eat last night and we suspected...

THE VOTES ARE IN AND WE ARE UNSURE OF OUR FUTURE...

Well the GREAT NEWS about today is that my dog Scooby crapped and had his breakfast this morning (he didn’t eat last night and we suspected he was bound up or possibly had a blockage so we were concerned)!!!

Other than that the ‘NEWS’ we woke up to this morning wasn’t quite so good and has the potential to have far greater reaching negative effects on us than we may even suspect.

I've thought a lot on how best I was going to express my feelings about the fact that a majority of my fellow Americans chose a candidate for our next president that is NOT for ALL of us but only for some of us and whose ideas about American family values vastly differs from my own and that of most of my friends.  I wanted to express my feelings in as non-dramatic, calm and rational way as possible.  I also wanted to express my feelings without trying to make anyone else appear to be the ‘bad guy’.  I have a lot of very deep and troubling emotions going on inside of me today so I’ll do my best to keep to the subject and to ‘go high’ instead of ‘low’.

I must say that as a woman I have some very deep feelings and concerns about this AND IT IS NOT because the other candidate, the one I wanted, is a woman.  My support of her has never had anything to do with her gender and in fact in the primaries she was not my desired candidate.  This is about my being a female in a male dominated country that has just decided that they wanted a man to lead our country who openly, unabashedly and happily reported to another man that he physically forced himself on women that he found attractive and that he could do whatever he wanted to them because he was rich and famous.  THAT is why I have concerns as a female in this country today. 

I grew up in the late 1960’s when women at the end of that decade were just beginning to finally get some traction when it came to having ‘almost’ as much value in the eyes of the law and society as a man did.  I grew up in the ‘sexual revolution’ when birth control was finally being allowed and prescribed so we women had some semblance of control over whether or not we got pregnant.  Sadly it was still a time when if a man beat his wife the authorities were rarely called because it was considered to be his private business and the authorities really didn’t want to get involved. I was a young teenager but was still aware that at last women were afforded some small, but important, concessions by men as to our worth and our ability to make our own choices; whether or not they involved a man.  So it was one small step forward for women and a few steps back due to the resistance to our move for equality but at least it was going in the direction of us women being considered as equals to men in intelligence, ability and our basic value as a human being.

There are a LOT of women who will read this who weren’t born yet and never really knew what it was like back then.  Women had very few rights, were openly discriminated against and were basically told by the men of this country to sit down, shut up and don’t make waves.  We were told back then that our only value was as baby making machines and in our servitude to men. Money as you know is power so back then women who stayed home, raised the kids and kept the home clean for their husbands had household allowances and many were monitored and held accountable for what they spent and on what; kind of like children might be monitored and held accountable by their parents.  Most women had no means to support themselves should they choose to leave and divorce their husbands so most women stayed in emotionally, mentally and physically abusive relationships. Believe it or not back then most men were ashamed to let it be known that their wife worked because a working wife suggested that the man was unable to support his family on his income alone and therefore it was damaging to his reputation among his male peers as well as to his ego. Back then many women who wanted to get a job, usually to have their own money that they could spend as they wished, were not allowed to by their husbands. Like other minorities of that era we were asked/required by the White Christian men in charge of everything and by the men in many of our homes to be happy with whatever we got, to never complain about how we were treated and to be extremely grateful that we were even allowed to speak; and in some extreme, but not isolated, cases should be grateful we were even allowed to live. 

So yesterday my fellow Americans demonstrated very clearly to me and to all of the women in this country that how men treat us, including in a sexual sense even if they are strangers to us, is not important.  We were told only too loudly by the choice so many made for OUR president that women’s issues are not important issues and that we, as a nation, are okay with having a man in the Whitehouse who has openly and publicly denigrated women, has openly sexually assaulted women and who has gloated about it to other males bragging about what he could get away with because of his fame and fortune.  This gloating/bragging admission was just that, an admission, and it was not stated by him to say what he’d like to do or what he’d fantasized about doing but about what he HAD DONE.  His apology, much belated by several years and only because he got busted on video, was far from heartfelt and his claims that he is different now have not been supported by his actions and/or words since his admission to it.

As a female I find that to be a personal insult and very disconcerting in a very big way…BIGLY, if you will.  I feel violated in a spiritual sense because the men, and some of the women, in this country by majority made a statement that I and my life, along with my sisters and fellow females (even those who voted for him), is of little value to them.  They have very clearly stated, through their votes, that a man has a right to violate any woman any time in any way, whether physically or verbally, and it is perfectly okay with them.  I will concede that those who voted this man into office most likely didn’t give the women’s rights aspect of what it means to support this man into account.  They were likely far too busy worrying about all of the ‘scary’ things that their candidate convinced them they should be worried about to give women’s rights or the women of this country a single thought.  By their neglect in including women and our rights in their consideration for president they have spoken even though they don’t realize it.

There are MANY reasons why I am so very disappointed and hurt by how many people voted for Trump but this one is the one, the vote against women, that directly involves me and at some point may directly affect me.  Along with my concern for myself, for my sisters and fellow women in this country, I also have a very grave and real concern for people of color, people who are Muslim as well as for liberal minded people and what these now emboldened people, who clearly do not like any of us much, will do to us believing that they are now ‘in charge’. I can’t and won’t predict what bad things may to happen.  Unlike the people who voted for Trump who seem to have made up their minds what would happen if his opposition were voted in, I really don’t think that I or anyone else can accurately predict anything that may or may not happen in the future.

In the end I have to sadly admit that I had absolutely no idea that so many fellow citizens in this country truly wanted the kind of way of life in our country that they have voted for in this election.  I had no idea that so many people were so nostalgic about the middle of the last century, the 50's and 60's, to want to go back to it and relive it again.  I am truly stunned by it and by the knowledge that there are so many people out there who apparently don’t feel equality is important, be it racial or gender equality, or that staying true to what OUR country was based on by our forefathers is important.  I am deeply saddened that so many people feel so disenfranchised in this country that they would see us go backwards rather than to progress forward.  I don’t know what the next four years hold in store for us but I fear that being a liberal is going to be frowned upon, that being a person of color is going to be more dangerous than it already is, that what religion one chooses may be dangerous and that we are going to ostracize ourselves from the rest of the world believing that isolationism is the answer to all of our problems.  I deeply and sincerely hope that I'm 100% incorrect in my fears but...

I guess those of us who hoped and those who have worked so hard for a brighter future where we join the rest of the world in making life better for everyone in it will just have to keep on keepin’ on in the hope that somehow some way we can work with others to manifest positive changes in our society and our country.

Good luck to us!!!  I think we are going to need it…