Fear-full

Letting Go

Garden of the Gods, Lana'i, Hawaii

Gillian Cornwall, c December 2102

How many people reading this have enough to eat every day?

How many own your homes or have a place to which you can go no matter what happens in your life?

How many of you have steady incomes or are self-employed with sufficient income? 

How many of us have at least one person we an call a friend?

How many are afraid of losing what they have?

How many would do just about anything to keep what they have no matter how it impacted others?

These are some of the questions I have been asking myself lately. As some of you know, I am in a time of income uncertainty. I could find myself in fairly dire straits should I not find work. 

This has raised questions in me with respect to privileged humanity's state of fear in the early 21st century. The privileged in North America and in financially and politically stable nations around the globe have enjoyed a great deal of breathing room and financial comfort for some time; however, there appears to be a change afoot. the earth is moving below peoples' feet and they are holding on to what they have for dear life as the shaking begins and possessions start to topple. 

A certain political clown in a nearby nation to me is causing said nation to lose its status as world political leader as it swirls the drain as some terrible cosmic joke that it created for itself. This will have a massive global impact. "Curiouser and curiouser" - to quote Lewis Carroll. 

Individually, for some of us, our situation is tenuous and we hold ourselves there through fear of loss, by being fear-full. Politics and news drive us to maintain this through their fear-mongering and conjuring of images and words that drive us into passive fear and a desire to follow, to keep, to hold what we have known....

What if the ways we have known are not the best ways? What if they are not the most sustainable ways? What if it is one giant dog and pony show that fictionalizes our true well-being into a fortress of "Work, pay and rest." Not so very long ago our work was entirely for ourselves. pre-industrial revolution, we created that which we required and desired to live. WE made our homes, our food, our families ourselves. We skipped the middle man, the boss, the company that pays us to now buy that which we require. Is it easier? Perhaps. But it takes twice as long to get to the result and it takes us away from our families, our children, our Elders. This weird way we have created for ourselves has forced us into working for more, a bottomless pit into which we pour our lives in order to have more, provide more, get more education - to GET AHEAD. Ahead of what? Your neighbour? To get the better job? The more money to buy more stuff? 

Too complicated. We have made our lives way too complicated and it has made us fear-full of losing what we have. It's made us fear-full that we have done the wrong thing. I think we are running even faster just to prove it was the right choice, the best way. Perhaps it is time for me, for all of us, to take a beat. STOP. THINK. REST. Play with your kids or your friends. STOP. Give some of what you have to someone else - as an act of goodness or just to see what it brings up in you.

Does giving make you feel that the person now owes you or was it truly a gift? Does giving away that which you earned and possess make you fear-full? 

Breathe. Let go of the fear a little. I know it's hard. I struggle with it every single minute of every day right now. Look around at the heaven in which we exist. give something back to the Mother Earth that sustains you today. Plant a tree. tend the earth. Pick up trash of the beach. Put some water out for the bees and birds and butterflies. Breathe. Let go of being full of fear. Replace it with being full of joy, love, gratitude. Try it for a minute. 

Love to each of you.

Gillian Cornwall, c. July 16, 2017

Bruce. Munro Trail

Lana'i, Hawaii

Gillian Cornwall, c. December 2012