Absurdities
The sky is telling a story of a day that will be both sun and thunderstorms. The temperature sits at 62 degrees fahrenheit and the eastern city energy is making itself felt. Today is Saturday.
It has been a week full of activity focused on the condition of the world. Where are we in our trajectory of existence on this planet? Locally (meaning in this country) things seem to be quite a mess. Our capacity for the absurd is way beyond what one might have imagined. As the season shifts into fall and winter, one has to worry about how people will survive on the streets - and there are more and more folks who are finding that the streets will be their home. And the things that can be made into shelter, often sit very near huge and expensive structures, filled with empty spaces waiting for residents who can pay substantial rents. It is hard to envision how such conditions will allow people to live in peace.
The way we have been functioning seems to have led to conditions that simply don't make sense. On one hand, we have a new intelligence emerging in AI that can integrate and problem solve at an inconceivably complex level. On the other hand, are human beings who by comparison seem to be getting less and less intelligent about how to function and problem solve. It is human being who are creating the complexities that are leading to conditions that simply should not exist in today's world.
Those conditions are war, poverty and wealth inequality, environmental degradation, choosing leaders who cannot see the fact of good/evil as a framework for disaster. Is anyone seeing a different way?
Thankfully, there are those who are taking the absurd in a very different direction - one that invites imagination to create what may seem like strange yet beautiful possibilities. The imagining of new kinds of spaces and ways of living are emerging in this time. There are people who are taking action to make clear the absurdities of systems that have evolve into traps must be re-imagined, dismantled, and rebuilt. They are doing this by engaging in organizing, protesting in virtual and physical spaces, writing songs and lyrics that bring a new beat into our hearts, sharing stories that may seem fictional but are in fact foreseeing new realities, and making art that pushes senses back into active, not passive existence. This is where the vibrancy and excitement of the moment can be found.
To have the good fortune to encounter the energy of taking the absurd and making it into an opportunity to reach into a different and beautiful possible future is what makes life interesting today. Everyone can move from despairing to repairing what seems to be part of the absurdity and turn it into an opportunity to join a new movement that is about affirming life. The opportunities are truly innumerable – just look at your world and choose where to enter the picture.