The World Has Gone Mad! What Must We Do?
Mandala made in one of my hotel parking lots.
Over the past few weeks, I have traveled about two thousand miles to participate in art festivals and facilitate workshops in a couple different states. Unfortunately, after the first event, my car radio began to malfunction due to the extreme heat it endured sitting in an open field during the first three-day festival. From that point onward, the radio reacted to every tiny bump or change in the pavement. For about the first fifteen hundred miles, it would randomly change stations about every twelve to thirty seconds. (Yes, I timed it.) Part of me liked the juxtaposition of so many different music genres and news perspectives. After awhile, however, it got a little maddening. In reality, it was mirroring how I see the world right now. It feels as though it has gone mad!
It has also been a couple of very active news weeks. I won't list everything. We all know it. We all feel it. Actually, its been like that for a few years now. I think most of us are weary, and perhaps collectively less hopeful. Yet, during my hours of driving, I listened to the news, off an on, as much as I can emotionally handle - often in little bits - kind of like the radio.
On my next to the last day of driving, somewhere in the mountains, my radio began to remember how to remain on one station for longer periods of time. I had been listening to about an hour, or two or three, of political discussion and it was getting too hard to listen to emotionally. I leaned over to turn off the radio, but before I could reach the button, it once again jumped to another frequency. This time, it was a classical station and the orchestra was starting one of the longest fermatas that I had ever heard with a note held so incredibly long! That one note held so much emotion - beauty and pain at the same time. Without words, it captured and held my emotions perfectly!
I know I am not alone having a hard time in this polarized world with unrelenting politics, wars, and forever wars, and climate instability. Most of us are getting weary or numb. So what must we do in these angry, uncertain, and sometimes terrifying times? I believe that we must, in our own individual ways, continue to pay attention. Be engaged. Be angry. Mourn. Be active. But that is not all!
Being truly engaged with the world's unrelenting stressful events, for most, is unsustainable! So, what else? I believe we must go to the mountains, nature, water - for that is where we remember we are all connected and all the same, and all equally necessary for a complete whole. We must be creators or viewers of the arts - for that is where we learn to express our emotions and hear, often without words, what others are saying. And we must remember or return to our faith or spirituality - for that is where we can seek and find openness, compassion, and humility.
On that next to the last day of driving, I was anxious to get home, but not to be in my apartment again. It has become dangerous and unpredictable. But I was ready to stop driving. It feels like the world does now. Home does not feel quite right. Running doesn't feel right either. Perhaps that is why even though I was anxious to complete the long two-day long drive home, I made several nature mandalas in the landscape along the way, like the one above in a hotel parking lot.
In the middle of our weariness, we must choose to pause to seek beauty in nature, art, and spirituality because that is what grounds us, transforms us, and connects us all.
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