Peace

This piece is available at Valley Artisans Market in Cambridge, NY.

I've been working on peace ornaments and peace pillows trying to bring myself some peace the last few days.  It has not been easy but try I must.  I believe the world is in a whole heap of trouble and we need to end the chaos within ourselves to fix it.  I don't watch the news anymore.  I monitor very carefully what I let in, but you really can't avoid what is going on unless you live in a cave in the middle of nowhere or a Tibetan mountaintop.

The latest is yet another mass shooting.  Why do these things happen?  I will never know, we can blame it on guns, we can blame it on mental illness or we can blame it on ourselves.  We are a society that likes our toys and our beliefs and when the two mesh together bedlam occurs.  But we are the masters of our own ship, the captains of our destiny.  At least that is what we wish for, but how many people live the life they've imagined?

We grow up with dreams and ideals and then we let them slide while we look for a real job so we can be productive.  Where has that lead us?  To rampant unemployment and the biggest gap between the rich and the poor in history.  What does that do to our countrymen?  It makes them lose hope, lose faith, lose their self esteem and move into a never ending cycle of not having enough, not being enough.

Our kids learned this from us too.   I think youthful optimism is still available and I know I am youthfully optimistic even though I'm a realist along with being an idealist.  But so many people who have played by the rules, gotten a job, gotten married, had the children, the white picket fence are watching it disappear and they just can't handle it.  Who can they blame?  I guess it's easy to blame the non documented workers that took their laboring jobs or the companies that outsource their jobs to countries which don't play the same rules the United States does, but it's actually bigger than that it's self responsibility.  We shop in Walmart, we eat animals manufactured specifically to be killed(could you eat the family dog), we allow poisons to be rained down on us to kill the mosquitos, we hang onto our guns for hope that if the government or a rampant gang of terrorists might come knocking at our door we will be ready.  But are we ready?  No not even close, all we are doing is killing ourselves, killing the environment, and creating an anxiety ridden society who is one crisis away from shooting up another building and unfortunately we have the guns to do it. 

I want to be optimistic, I want to be at peace but I'm an empath so even if I don't watch the news, or don't read the newspaper I feel the chaos of the world inside myself.  I hear the voices of my friends and countrymen who wonder what will happen to them if they lose their job?  What will happen to their kids if the economy doesn't improve?  What will happen if a flood takes away their home or if we end up in yet another endless war.  Since 9/11/2001 everything seems like an endless war and we've made everyone else the enemy, but the truth is we are the enemy.  We allow it to happen.  We look at others who haven't coped and we pass judgment.  But sooner or later that other will be us, we are all in this together.  There are not enough toys or drugs to save us from ourselves.  We have to do it ourselves.

When the constitution was written it didn't take into account all the changes in technology and weaponry that make this world dangerous at times.  Nobody writing the constitution imagined a gun that could kill 20 schoolchildren in a matter of minutes.  Nobody imagined technology that could make it rain or forecast the rain.  Nobody imagined all the toxins available to kill all the bugs or make chickens big enough to feed millions.  We let ourselves get carried away and now we are paying the price for it.  It's time to be simple again.  To look in the mirror and say let's just be peaceful today and do something that makes us happy and peaceful, no matter what that is.

I'm off the soapbox, nobody reads this stuff anyway.  But now I'm going to hand embroider and bring a little more peace into my own life so I can practice what I preach.  Find love, find peace, be happy.

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