An observation as to excuses

We (humans) have an excuse for everything except for having an excuse for everything.

We can do better.

ctwfrank

As to the matter of what counts…

In the end, it’s not the count of how many things we do that matters, what counts is how many of those things that we do, matter.

We can do better

ctwfrank

Declaration of a Human

This Declaration was born was January 1, 2010. It is living document and like all living things, it must be born.  This Declaration was born as it was being written. It doesn’t matter which one of us wrote it; what matters is that it lives by virtue of the human experience and therefore it is authored by all of us and moves with us.  We are all its parents. What is being declared is done so under the only authority possible in order for it to be true; it was written by a Human Being.  The common thread that binds these words to all of us is our humanity, therefore this Declaration is not written in representation of any group, organization, school of thought or any of the myriad of concepts, ideas, ideals, beliefs or other things that we created and are so fond of representing, in fact it represents no one; it is making a declaration that stands for every single one us, but in the end this document is merely a collection of words grouped together in single document.  It is a human expression, not a representation of our humanity.  Nothing, not a document and especially no person can represent another person; that is absurd concept.  Humans can’t be represented by other humans; that violates the laws of physics, only the interests of one or some individuals can be represented by others, and we are all paying the price for being so confused about something so simple.  This Declaration is written because it needs to be written, so it can be read by others.  It is written so it can be born.

This Declaration has a single purpose:  to communicate with clear and inarguable understanding, some basic things that are common to us all, but which we forget.  It’s easy to do when the rest of us forget as well; for example, we forget to think.  Perhaps it’s because we gave life and validity to many concept and ideas that we created and by doing so, we invalidate them and turn them into an aberrations, like what we did with the concept of representation. If a person can’t speak because they are mute, then another person can be their voice, if they agree as much and the speaker becomes the representation of the other’s will to speak.  If a person can’t walk because they are injured or infirmed, than another person can be their legs and carry them, if they agree as much and the walker becomes the representation of the other’s will to walk. No one can be the representation of another’s humanity and their ability to think however, and even if any one of us, or all of, agrees as much, one person’s humanity cannot be the representation of another person’s humanity.  That would be inhuman.  A person can exist and be human if they lose the ability to speak or to walk, for example but no one can exist without thinking, even though it might appear that way today.  So many of us want to believe that we actually don’t have to think if we agree to have a representative to whom we delegate our thinking. That is a severely flawed human construct which has done an almost unbearable amount of damage to all of us.  Believing that we do not have to exercise our ability to think, the very thing which defines our humanity, beyond our own individual desires is to resign our humanity.  Even worse; if, out of ignorance or even by imposition, we should ever believe that we can transfer our responsibility to think to any other one of us so that we are free to think only of ourselves, then we would living in our world, today, because that’s what we all think we believe.  We are many because it is necessary, otherwise there would only be one of us.   What each one of us does contributes to that which is the human condition, which is defined by what all of us do.  We forgot this, too.  These are things that we already know, somewhere inside of each one of us; each and every one of us.   These words are not for one of us or a few of us or about me, it’s about us, all of us. All of us, by the way, includes the roughly 3.5 billion of us (that’s half of all of us) for which there isn’t enough of whatever is required for a person to be civilized, so we ignore them.  Half of us have no home, no dreams, no jobs, no money, and no food and not even a cup of potable water, yet we ignore them.  We call them the poor or the unfortunate and lie to ourselves by thinking that poverty or homelessness or fear is a disease or something.  We appease the guilt by feeling sorry for them and occasionally donating some of what the rest of us value above all else; money, as a gesture of solidarity and philanthropy (because, after all, it’s money) and then we just forget about them and ignore them.  It is what we do, and each one of us knows this in our hearts.  We may be able to act like we don’t, but if this were true, then why can we look into our own eyes when we look into a mirror?  We know this as well; not talking about it doesn’t make it go away; just ask the person looking back at you from the mirror

We are all we have.  This Declaration is about us because it’s all about us, it always has been; it’s just hard to remember sometimes.  What matters is that we read these words, so we may remember what we already know; that being human comes naturally; if one of us forgets something important, we help each other to remember.  It’s not a matter of right or wrong, it’s simply what we DO, just like what we do (or at least what we know we should do) if the person walking in front of one of us trips and begins to fall: you help them.  You reach out and steady them so they do not fall, or catch them if they are already falling or otherwise act to help them.  It doesn’t require thinking, that’s just what you do.  What requires thinking is convincing oneself that it’s NOT what we do.  Each one of us knows this.  Afterward, we may continue walking, or stop and chat, or whatever else we decide, it’s entirely up to us.  Everything that we have ever done, we have done because we chose to and we made those choices because we can.  We can even choose to not do what we know we should do, even though we don’t know why we know we should.  Somehow, we just know.  These words have the same purpose; they stand for what any one of us does when another needs help; we offer our humanity to them.  If you have forgotten what it feels like, don’t worry, it will come back to you once you make the choice to remember.

We find ourselves at a point in the human experience where we must make choices. When it comes to making a choice, only the ability to choose is important.  In the end, no single thing in our perception is any more or less important than any other thing, we choose the importance that we give things, because we can.  We all live together in the civilized world that we chose to create and from which we are all running, before it kills us. If I, as an individual who is also part of the Human race, choose to look beyond what I have been taught and what I thought I believed; namely, -that I am the center of my own universe and as such that I am the most important thing in the universe-, then I might see something else besides myself.  Most of us only see ourselves individually and in our own mind; everyone else is just something that has to be tolerated somehow.    Waking up and looking beyond the tip of one’s own nose is a no simple task.  It is hard to leave the comfort of one’s own importance.  It is hard because in order to do so, it must be true and we know when it’s true.  Some truths are very hard to accept and we may choose not to accept a truth.  That does not change the truth, however.  We also know this. We all find ourselves ending up in that place where “I” come first and there we stay, regardless of circumstances.  I found myself there as well and thought the same thing.  I was wrong.  This is simply the truth.  It is my truth, which also happens to be our truth, for we are all connected by our humanity.  Truth is also free, it’s costs nothing and cannot be sold or bought.  There is never the need to create an incentive for truth; it is its own incentive.  When we forget this, what we are left with are the unpleasant illusions that are the result of the lies we have chosen to tell ourselves since we realized we could choose what we tell ourselves and others.  Everyone feels the same exact way and we all know this, yet we actually believe that as long as nobody knows what “I” think, then we are safe.  We believe this very much.  “Nobody knows what I’m thinking.  Nobody knows my intentions or what I really want.  I can think only about myself and act otherwise.  No one will know.”  We choose to believe that as well and the very second that we do, we lie to ourselves and THAT is messy. Yet we still believe no one will know.  Each one of us knows and yet we hang on to those lies because it is all we know and we have made a mess because of it.  We’ve been doing this to ourselves for a long time now.  So long that we seem to have forgotten that we chose this; we choose, or transferred our right to choose, everything that exists today and which is killing us, inside and out.  We just forgot, so we believe that those choices are a separate and independent “reality” with life, power and authority. This is why each one of us feels alone, even though we are many; we dare not share the privacy of our true thoughts with anyone, it would be unbearable to see ourselves reflected in the eyes of another person, yet they are actually reflected in the eyes of every other person.  There are almost 7 billion of us, and the vast majority feels utterly and completely alone and afraid, and those who don’t may be completely lost.  This is true and we all know it is so, until we remember that it is a choice. So then, why have we done this to ourselves?  Why have we chosen to accept it and to perpetuate it? In the end, it’s a choice: an individual choice.  Nothing can change that; nothing can change the reality that we are a collective made up of individuals.  We simply don’t know how to reconcile the two:  “I” and “us”.   We can choose to remember that we have a choice and then make some choices.  We can choose to look at ourselves in a mirror, with no one else there, and simply choose to stop lying to ourselves. This world that we have created is not normal, it is a horrible and inhuman place and it is this way because that is what we chose to accept.  It’s time to choose to give everything another try. It must be a true choice; we know when it’s true.  It’s a hard choice.  To see any one of us is to see us all and we are all the same.  The price of one instant of the truth is hefty.  Once we drop the self-deceit, what is usually there, waiting to burst forth is FEAR and ANGER.  It is logical to be angry.  For the vast majority of us, life is unfair, unpleasant and painful, and it’s okay to feel anger but it’s never okay to give anger free reign, we all know this as well.  If we look hard, we can see that it is there, in that tiny space between what is and what will be, that we find ourselves now.  We can no longer hide inside our own arrogance or guilt.  Everything that we have ever done has ruptured the sack that we hid it all in and it no longer requires deep introspection or concentration to see and feel heavy burden of the sum total of all the individual lies we’ve told ourselves for thousands of years.  We can’t hide all of the atrocities we’ve either committed or allowed to be committed anymore; we can see it in each others eyes every time we look at each other.  We all know this. I repeat we all know this.  The safety we felt by believing that “no one would know” what was in our minds and hearts is gone. We share the responsibility for what we’ve done to ourselves every time it beats us over the head.  Our choices have put us in the position where we have no choice but to see and feel what those choices have made of the human condition.  We all know this and to some degree we’ve known this for a long time, we’ve just never talked about it.  We’ve made it very hard to talk to each other, but over time, we have begun to talk to each other as “people” and not “one of us talking to one of them”: there is no “them”, remember?  We have technology now, so it is possible to communicate with many other people in many different places; at first through our televisions and now through our computers, which have also allowed for us to talk, and we have used these things to talk to one another.  The very humanity we are sharing through our computer screens and cell phones have created a giant room where we can all see each other, and it turns out that we all see the same thing.  All of us do, except for a small handful that can’t let go of their addictions.  We’ve seen how our choices have made us suffer and how they have become an obstacle to happiness and joy.  We have made ourselves suffer by choice.

We have forgotten that other than ourselves, we created everything that wasn’t already here and those things make up our civilization. These things all have one thing in common: like the concept of representation, they create the illusion of authority and the acceptance that there is a requirement to obey the results of their functions, which once again, we created.  Things like wealth, and authority and sovereignty and hierarchy, and debt, and value and social position and rules and science and art and everything else that isn’t a part of the natural earth or us.  We created all of these things. Most of the things that we created were created by only a few of us and it was a very long time ago, but they were just choices made with a little inspiration.  Whenever a human adds a little inspiration to a choice, we create something.  Things like agriculture and money, music, greed, literature, selfishness, compassion, carelessness, envy, government, religion, medicine, laughter and everything else we know.  We are capable of so much.  That is why we get angry when we face our own truth; that we have made bad choices and have done nothing about it, while all the time having the ability to choose something else.  I was angry, very angry.  I was angry at myself and at you and at everybody.  I felt I had no choice but to be angry until I realized that I have a choice.  We all do, and through that choice I am no longer limited to “me” living in the universe of “I”, I can see that “I” am one of “US”, and that WE are what is important.  It is by virtue of all of these facts that the following first DECLARATION is made:

I forgive myself. For waiting until now to make this choice and for anything I may have done or not done, consciously or not, when I knew that I shouldn’t have.  I forgive every one of us who did nothing or who did everything that contributed to the sad and inhuman state of humanity today.  I choose to do so freely and truly, with full knowledge that to lie to myself brings about only destruction.  If I can do this, then we all can. We can forgive ourselves and each other – for the past, and therefore create the possibility to choose a different future.  In the end, it’s only a choice; our choice.

We can do better. This DECLARATION stands as a living testament to this fact.

The rest is up to us, all of us.

End of part 1.

Memo to the rest of us

This is a reminder memo only, as required by the fact that we forget this every so often.

REMINDER:

There is no THEM.  There’s only US, and we are all we have.

We can do better