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We're all complicit
06/08/2010
We're all complicit. In everything. The oil disaster in the Gulf; the Israeli/Palestinian conflict; the war in Afghanistan; the destruction of the rainforests; the crisis in Darfur. Yesterday we got word that my brother might have killed a man with a backhoe. An accident. A friend. As my heart was breaking for my brother and his friend...and his friend's family...there was nothing I wouldn't have done to restore this man to wholeness. To ensure that he and his loved ones would always be well. I realized how connected I was--my whole family was--to this man and his family. We were karmically linked in the most profound ways. Why had it taken a possibly fatal accident for me to realize this? Yet it's the same situation everywhere I look. We all use the oil that is pouring out of the well and poisoning the Gulf. Our demand has exhausted all of the most accessible deposits of the stuff. We'll increasingly jeopardize the planet the more we try to develop the more remote resources. Why blame BP? We're all responsible. We're all responsible for the consumption that is forcing humanity further and further into habitats once safe for wildlife. Destroying entire species and ecosystems as we attempt to buy ourselves perhaps five minutes of distraction. Of what we call happiness. We all try to isolate ourselves from the people we think of as enemies. They want to be happy; we want to be happy. Instead of building on this commonality, we demonize our "others"...I demonize Tea Baggers...they demonize Obama...Tutsis demonize Hutus...Americans who've been here a generation demonize those just arriving. We're all playing the same game. And it's fatal. Can't we wake up? Can't we realize we're all connected? We're all in this together? I thought I was awake. It took a near-fatal accident for me to feel the degree to which I am still sleep-walking.
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