April 22, 2011

• Goodness

  Goodness

   

  There's much badness in the world. It's hard for some people to admit it because they don't know what to do about it, how to deal with it, which really means how to change it. People steal from each other. That's my list of badness. Stealing. We steal each others' stuff, reputations, health, happiness and lives. When you kill someone you have stolen their life, their right to live to the best of their ability, the life they've been given. When we look at each other we see differences because we feel so separate from one another in these bodies. We find it nearly impossible to think of ourselves apart from the body. It's so overpowering and we're so identified with it. Through its senses we interact with the world outside until we can no longer easily distinguish the outside from the inside. Our thoughts are all connected to what's outside of us. There is little or no separation between the world outside and the inner world, where we might be able to find something more real, more lasting. Something that could help us deal with the upset, uncertainty and general insanity of the outer world. To many, the distinction between inner and out is simply an idea and nothing more. They have no experience of any insulation from the world outside. They have to do what it makes them do. If someone offends them they have to feel offended inside and then do something to protect themselves or protect others from ever being offended again. They can't see that they were offended inside, not outside. They are lost. We are lost in this forest of this outer world where, after a while, all the trees look the same.

  There's much goodness in the world. It's hard for some people to admit it because they can't see it. All the badness has affected their eyes the same way sitting in a dark room until you can begin to see in it, makes light painful to the eyes when it suddenly shines. The light hurts our eyes when we're not accustomed to it. Sometimes the pain is so intense we want to put out the light to ease our pain because closing our eyes isn't enough. Love is frightening. It can make us feel so weak and vulnerable. I don't mean the kind of love we sell on Valentine's Day. I mean the kind of love that the crazies lived and taught. The kind of love that made them surrender their lives happily, peacefully, even in the midst of the most horrific hatred, violence and injustice. The kind of love that could say from a place of unbelievable pain, "Forgive them because they don't know what they're doing." It's hard to see that kind of goodness because we think they did know what they were doing. We think we know all kind of things. Those things we think we know, the things about which I'm talking, they don't make us more loving. They make us more guarded, judgmental, suspicious, fearful, angry and finally, sadly--hateful.

  There's much we don't understand in the world. It's hard to live with people who have both goodness and badness inside of them. It's hard to see we have both goodness and badness inside of ourselves. Because we don't know how to deal with our badness, how to rid ourselves of it, we look at the badness in others and feel superior to them because our badness isn't that bad. It helps to forget our own badness when we focus on the badness of others. We can always find someone better and someone worse than ourselves. We find more people worse, not because there are more worse people but because it's really hard to see our own badness. It's hard to live with it without justifying it. We don't really want to be bad. It's just that people, the world, all that stuff makes us do things that we don't really want to do, at first. Then later, when we do it, we see that it gives us a more secure feeling, like we've been right and we do need to defend ourselves against all the badness. We forget that no matter how horribly we're treated, we don't have to respond in the same way. We might have a little choice once in a while. We have every right to be offended, hurt, angry and even violent when people do bad things to us or those we love. What we forget, what the world has forgotten and can't seem to remember when it needs to be remembered, is that we also have the right not to be offended, hurt, angry and violent. It's a right that has to be protected, nourished and exercised every day or it, like many rights, gets lost in the toy box of life. My name is James Parkinson and I wrote this from my heart because I believe it with all my heart and try every day to live it. I fail often, but not as often as once I did. This isn't written to chastise anyone or make anyone do anything differently. If something inside of you sings a little when you read it then try to touch that something and let it have its voice in your life. If not then you probably haven't made it this far in your reading anyway.

  • 6:03 pm
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