Impact — by Lucky

There is a part of being human that I’ve always found difficult. I hope that it doesn’t have to always be this way, this hard, but it always has been, and I want to try and do something about it. I’m afraid though. This is one of those things that requires me to ask for help. If that isn’t difficult enough, I know to get at this, in a real way, I have to ask for help from you, the very people my blindness impacts the most.

I can’t help it. I’m only human. That is not only my overused excuse, but it happens to be true.  Addressing this issue is probably going to take all the compassion I can muster, and all you can muster too. Being human means I generate impacts (often hurtful) that I’m not aware of. I am clumsy and blind, and I don’t know know it as much as I need to. Because all of this is so, I need you, and I know you need me. I would like to believe we could deal with the impacts we necessarily have upon, and with, each other.

I am one of, what my friend Jim calls, the “not-sees.” I don’t see some things very well.  What happens is that I do a lot of damage — I’m like the proverbial bull in the china shop — because I’m looking somewhere else, or I’m just unable to see all of the consequences of my actions.

I’ve done a lot of therapy, hell, I’ve been a therapist for a long time. Amongst the many things I did in both those roles, has been operate by the belief that I (one) could stop bumping into, and hurting (and sometimes being hurt by), people. I have been wrong about that. This is another example, though pretty ordinary, of how blind I can be.

Lately, I’ve come to see that my blindness is part of being human. I can see, only partly at best. That awareness has made it easier for me to apologize, but does nothing to help me cause less harm. Now my hope rests upon the company I keep. I know I’m going to bump into them from time to time —I’m fond of saying community is a contact sport — but it seldom goes easily when I do. I’m not pretending I’m not blind —I’m not a climate change denier (claiming we humans have no effect on the world) — in fact, I’m too aware that I do, and it leaves me feeling a regret I have a hard time getting past.

So my basic self-image right now contains an awareness that I am perpetually hurtful to the one’s I say I love. Since I say I love community that poses a real challenge to me. I want to do more than just feel bad about it. So, I’ve come to asking for your help. I know if I could just forgive everyone I wouldn’t have to feel this way, but I don’t want to issue a blanket pardon, that doesn’t adequately address the harm in the world that I (and others) seem to be a part of.

I realize I can’t make all of the hurt go away. I know that pain is sometimes the way Mystery gets in, but it seems that there is more hurt in the world than necessary. I’d like to be part of that changing some.  And, I’m just foolish enough, or immature enough, to think that it can be different, for me, and for all of us. But, I’m currently at the place where I can’t imagine that hurting, the hurting I’m responsible for, being addressed without your help.

I keep thinking about a more active form of forgiveness, one that is more immediate, personal, and natural. My imagination though runs to climate change. Before us, within our experience, there is plenty of evidence of our (we humans) impact upon Earth. Alongside that impact, I want to place the impact we have upon one another. Just as the climate is changing in response to our actions, so is the world of social relations being shaped by our impact upon one another.

I know I can’t help impacting you. I know you can’t help impacting me. But, I don’t live in a world where that is just a random coincidence anymore. I live in a world where I am awash in connection. I know there is little that is actually random about it. Yet, I still live like my social impacts are merely farts in the wind. That no longer seems right.

I need your help to live otherwise. Let’s talk about it. Let’s interact like our contact, our incidental impacts upon each other, are really gifts, gifts that indicate how truly connected we are. I want to celebrate the new awareness that is coming to me later here in life, and I can’t do it without playmates, without others who will share with me the difficult process of dealing anew with my (our) blind ignorance.

I don’t like to know that I am (despite my best efforts) overbearing, controlling, and think too much of myself. I don’t react well to finding out either. But, I can do better. I imagine that if I wasn’t feeling so alone, and so prone, in my isolation, to all kinds of bad feelings, that maybe I could handle knowing more about myself. I also imagine that if I knew I was deeply connected and wanted here, then I could celebrate the little things, the places where we intersect (despite, and even sometimes because of my intransigence).

Connecting asks this of me. I don’t think, despite all my self-reliant alarms, that I can pull this off alone. This is one of those places where I can’t help saying (thank God my disability has forced me into this ability), I need your help.

Please help me! I (words that are taboo in our social reality) need your hand. And, I have reason to suspect, you need mine. Let’s make the most out of our impacts upon each other!

The Tension — by Lucky

I want to spend some time facing one of the most vexing realities I’m confronted with. I haven’t really tried facing this dilemma head on before. It drew my attention recently, and appearing on my radar screen, I began to think this is a phenomenon I run into all the time, and I haven’t really looked at it. Now, I’m stopping to do so. And I’m encountering the reality that what I face now has been ruling me for a long time. I am filled with dread. I don’t want to encounter what I cannot handle, but neither do I want to be ruled by what I fear.

I’ve been feeling a kind of troublesome tension that wracks my awareness and limits me. I’m talking about my awareness of the terminal condition of this world. I know how bad it is. And, I have difficulty knowing. I feel like I should do something right now, and I feel guilty because whatever I would do is not enough. I cannot put this heartache to rest. I’m damned if I do (respond) and damned if I don’t (become passive and guilty).

I feel like I am caught in an avalanche. I should try to survive. I am overwhelmed by the power of what I’m involved in. Survival is not really my call. But neither is just giving in. I vacillate between these two poles, feeling trapped and distorted by my awareness, that this is the reality I’m in. I cannot conceive of a way to make a difference, nor can I do nothing for very long. I ‘m never get off the hook. For a while I can convince myself of a change, then little by little, I realize that change doesn’t really change anything. I live with a certain anxiety that this house of cards is already coming down.

Sometimes I think it should, that I should help it, that my contribution is to add weight to this crumbling structure, to help it fall. But then I just as quickly fear the possibility. I don’t want the human experiment to end on my watch. I feel intensely disloyal.

I don’t really have a place to stand. I’m just uneasy. Anything I do is contaminated by my awareness. Not doing anything, or enough, is equally unsatisfying. I am literally torn apart, if I let myself know what I already know.

I carry this burden. Who doesn’t? I don’t think this just troubles those who are awake, it seems probable to me, that I suffer an awareness, that even when it is not consciously felt, all humanity bears.

I live with an impossible recognition. The nightmare goes on, and if one pays attention, it gets more and more horrifying. Still, I live within it. I can’t help but think about what I might be like if I didn’t have to bear this form of gravity, if, somehow, I wasn’t caught up in these times. Still, I am.

I can feel this weight every time I move. I can feel it when I am still, too. To be honest, it distorts everything I do. I don’t want it to, but it does. This is my environment now. I live with the day-to-day possibility of collapse. All of my interactions are defined, to some extent, by the reality of demise. I don’t really know what kind of human this makes me? I just know that living seems to bear this form of torment.

So it seems to me that modern life contains a kind of anxious tension that our ancestors may have never known. Do you think they could have imagined a time when humans had reason to not trust each other, because we know now how culpable we all are?

I’m discovering something though. In the midst of all this difficult mess, I am finding that I trust more those who are not pretending that crisis isn’t looming. I tend to listen harder to those who let themselves feel the mess we are in. I don’t mean the one’s who are just horrified (and want to do something), but those who are intent upon living within the truth of this world. I tend to listen to, and respect, those who’s hearts are broken by this shattered world, and have the temerity to live, relate, love, and exist torn apart. Their guts hang out, like mine, and I am encouraged.

Strangely, there seems to be nothing so humbling and enlivening as acceptance. The world is crumbling. For some reason this is coaxing the best and worst out of our species. I chose to look at the best. I hope that serves evolution, because it gives me hope. It may be that it takes such extreme conditions to evoke an awareness that can bear a fatal truth. If it does, then I am glad I get to be on the scene, for this moment in our species life.

Switchbacks — by Lucky

I have been reflecting upon a wonderful metaphor/phenomenon that has been occurring in one of the groups I’ve been part of. In what, I think of it as a hallmark, as an elder achievement, that the members of the group experience each other as nourishing. In fact, the group has described themselves as a nutrient-rich environment, where people end up feeding each other. The idea, that we, in all our differences, could be food for each other, is a real testimony, to the learning and growth happening.

It occurred to me, as I gave this poem one last reading, that it spoke of another kind of food that has nourished me throughout my life. You may recall I was greatly touched by the metaphors of “a kind word” and “a bottle of water” that come at the end of the poem. This time I noticed a more difficult and more reliable food source, one I have a much more ambivalent relationship with. Switchbacks. Here, again, is the poem, but this time I urge you to reflect on the food; unexpected and seemingly oppositional change offers.

On the Path to Diamond Head

You climb the steep path of switchbacks,

In the hope of gaining a beautiful perspective. 

The path is rough and broken,

With too many stairs for any one person.

Always wondering how much more is required. 

There!  Below you are others,

Traveling on the same path as you,

Tired and thirsty, slogging through their desire to stop.

If only they could climb straight up,

shortening the endless path of switch back.

They could be where you are now, see what you see, be closer to their goal.

But… isn’t their journey hard enough as it is?

Instead of wishing them your vista,

Why not offer a kind word and a bottle of water?

                                                                                 Jeffrey Young

How many times over the course of my lifetime have I “slogged through my desires” only to find that I am thwarted by something unexpected. This is the kind of food I prefer to ignore, to complain about, and often refuse to eat. Life has fed me with another switchback. Even when I know it is coming, and that I have chosen this path, I fail to appreciate the switchback. Another more ‘beautiful perspective” might be ahead, but only if I will willingly negotiate a twist of fate that I don’t want. This is the kind of kindness, direction, and nourishing I have trouble with.

Switchbacks linger at my edges. They sometimes are indistinguishable from edge phenomena. There before me is the person or situation I don’t like, or the family feeling, or unpleasant truth, I’ve been trying to ignore. They don’t look like nourishing food. I want something else. I don’t want to know myself, or anyone, that much. Still, here it is, the bitter medicine of some greater truth, which propels me forward. Switchbacks make my life better, enriching me, keeping me on the path, guiding me towards completion. They make this life compelling, mysterious, and completely surprising.

Switchbacks add drama to this journey. And yet, I think I could live without them. I don’t like the whiplash and redirection they provide. I’m tired of the climb, tired of the tedium, tired of the predictable ritual of having to turn onto another sloping segment of the journey. Switchbacks may be helping me get there, may be helping me do the impossible, and are probably allowing me to know possibilities I could never have arrived at without them. But, I can’t say I am ever looking forward to them. This is a form of nourishment, which is so undelectable, that I would happily forgo it.

Switchbacks. I can’t live with them, and can’t live without them. It’s a good thing I don’t seem to have any control of them. Despite me, they just knock over my apple cart. They seem to me like some kind of karmic bullies that make the playground an unsafe place. All my efforts to avoid them are smoke signals and signs that guide them in. They are the smelly and unkempt relatives, who keep showing up at my birthday party. I don’t know how they know all my dirty little secrets, but they do, and they aren’t satisfied till everybody else does too. Switchbacks, the food source that keeps on giving, sometimes over feeds me.

I know, I should be grateful. Probably, I am. I have my moments of abstract awareness of some kind of oneness. I even have, fewer admittedly, moments when I genuinely know how blessed I am. Switchbacks carry me to places I wouldn’t willingly go. They are the guarantors of my journey. They seem to reflect some greater knowledge of my potential. In short, they are a blessing and a curse. The journey wouldn’t mean anything, wouldn’t hold any suspense, wouldn’t even be compelling, without them. They are the rocks in the road that let me know I’m getting somewhere.

And, all along, switchbacks are food, real food, providing me with substantial energy, maturity and growth. I’ll probably keep bitching and moaning about not being fed what I want, but I’ll never have a better, more reliable source of nutrition. The journey, my journey, relies on them.  I can’t get over, around, or past them. Mystery makes me through them!

A Kind Word and A Bottle of Water — by Lucky

Recently, I was sitting in my living room with a friend of mine named Jeffrey. We were talking about the many challenges we face by trying to be conscious. Soon the conversation turned to how we could help other path mates. He surprised me with the following poem, which he had written, to address this same question. Two of his metaphors immediately captured my attention — a kind word, and a bottle of water. I want to share the poem with you and inquire further into the make-up of these two offerings. I hope it touches you, as it did me, and that you share your awareness with another climber.

On the Path to Diamond Head

You climb the steep path of switchbacks,

In the hope of gaining a beautiful perspective. 

The path is rough and broken,

With too many stairs for any one person.

Always wondering how much more is required. 

There!  Below you are others,

Traveling on the same path as you,

Tired and thirsty, slogging through their desire to stop.

If only they could climb straight up,

shortening the endless path of switch back.

They could be where you are now, see what you see, be closer to their goal.

But… isn’t their journey hard enough as it is?

Instead of wishing them your vista,

Why not offer a kind word and a bottle of water?

                                                                                 Jeffrey Young

In reflecting upon “the kind word” and “the bottle of water,” I ask. What are they, really? How does one offer them? Who does one see? All along the way, as I reflected, I thought about those who have helped me climb. I may be just grateful enough to pass along some of what enables me to keep going.

As a burgeoning elder responsible to the future, I look to the young ones, sometimes behind me on the path, sometimes ahead, and I want to admire them (a kind word) and I want to refresh them (a bottle of water). But, what do I, who has been struggling empty-handed so long, have to give? My only answer, at this point, is this, a kind word of admiration for who they are becoming, and a bottle of water, some kind of customized nourishment, a little of life’s vitality, to enable them to continue.

As a burgeoning elder responsible to the present, I look to my fellow elders, sometimes behind me on the path, sometimes ahead, and I want to admire them (a kind word) and I want to refresh them (a bottle of water). But, I forget. I spend too much of my time doubting that I might hold anything that could provide succor, inspiration or energy. My hands are full of mistakes. My only answer, at this point, is this, a kind word of admiration for who they are becoming, and a bottle of water, a little of life’s vitality, to enable them to continue.

The latter, I’ve concluded, can only be transferred through adequate relating. The life-force, as I see it, is community (a knowing that the wholeness of all things is behind, and within). This isn’t a belonging, or an achievement, that can be passed on. This is only the solace of sharing a freshly broken-open heart.

The gift of water is the gift of Life. Sharing is what life is about. The climb, is Life’s gift to all of us. How we help each other along the way, is how we honor what has been given to us. Miraculously, at the same time, it is our gift of support for each other. My climb into being fully what the Universe created — more fully myself — is the gift I can best give, and strangely, the one that offers the most nourishment.

May there always be climbers — refreshment in the making!

Growing Older by Lucky

I have been writing about growing older. The process of sitting down and thinking about what I have been learning has taken me to places in my own awareness that I didn’t know existed. Strangely, I‘ve been learning from some mystery source within me. What I realized lately, is such a new idea for me, and is so relevant to what I perceive around me, that I want to share this exploration, because if this idea has any merit, it might decrease our suffering. It has something to do with growing older, something inevitable, that you and I have no control over.

I guess I started consciously aging when I had my stroke. Before then, aging was kind of abstract, a kind of diminishment I was going to go through some day in the future. Then my life was overturned by a long near death experience. The experience itself taught me a lot about this precious miracle we call Life. Afterward, when I realized that I was going to come back to Life, as an older, broken-down, disabled, remnant of a man, I came face-to-face with what it meant to be an old person in a world that focuses on health, production, and eternal doing.

I have been dwelling within this experience for some time now. I bring the perspective and sensitization of my long nightmare. I bring this to being a disabled, brain-damaged man, alive and older. I don’t think I have yet recovered from what happened to me. So, I’m still reeling from the sucker punch Life gave me, the one that broke through my lethargy, and renewed this process of awakening. Wakening anew has meant, among other things, finding out more about entering and occupying the ranks of the old.

In truth, I’m still an infant old person. I’m only 65. I still have the energy to be indignant about how old people are treated, and I have the awareness to know that this is a disservice to all. So, a part of what motivates me to write about this, to care, to try to create a change, is because I hate waste. Its not that the old are cast off — don’t get me wrong that bothers me — but what really irks me, is that perspective, hard-won experience, and wisdom go too.

I live with a fear that haunts me, and makes getting older a restless, anxiety-provoking time. I fear being placed, in my wheelchair, in some back ward somewhere, where nobody knows me or cares about me. Somehow, I know it has happened, and can happen again, perhaps to me. Contrast this fear, with the budding sense I have, that I am just now ripening into what I was meant to be, and you have the raw ingredients for all kinds of tumult. My thoughts are trying to compensate for the remarkable ignorance I’m finding in myself, and in my culture.

Well, these thoughts and feelings happened upon something the other day, which has shaken me, and makes this a bad dream, one I dearly want to wake from. I already have a hard time being a disabled person (the disabled were the first people the Nazi’s tried to exterminate). I’ve had to learn all the difficult lessons that most people fear will come with the debilities of old age. I have had to learn how to be dependent. I’ve had to learn how to ask for help. I’ve had to face my own diminishment, to know my own incapacity, to sit with helplessness. I know I am feared. People practice “gaze aversion” with me all the time. I have had to deal with being a product of this culture. I have had to battle with my own internalized prejudice against being disabled. Basically, I’ve hated and feared my self.

Luckily, I’ve been at this for a while. I’ve learned what I had to, and overcome most of my own prejudice. By and large, I’m now immune to most of the prejudice directed my way. Life has granted me the time, friends and necessity to de-personalize most of this. But, what I just discovered, is that I, and other overtly disabled people like me, are the advance guard. We are on the same continuum as everybody else. The old are being treated just like the disabled. They are made invisible, irrelevant, and treated like a drain on society. Its easy (relatively) to cast me off because I’m visibly broken, its also easy to cast off the grey, slow, forgetful, aging ones. If you don’t think you are being cast off just check-in on how isolated and alone you are, and look around and see how many of your friends are old and grey just like you.

I sometimes hurt when older people don’t see my disability, because then they are also not seeing the truth of their own aging. I’m lucky I don’t have chronic pain, but I do have chronic awareness. I feel, through some other means than my body, the emotions of the moment, the tides of awareness, the reality that is to hard to take. For better, or worse, I reside there.  I can feel the cost that everyone is paying for not seeing what is hidden in old age, disability and our basic human-ness.

I am big, vital, articulate and full of Life, so people frequently don’t see me as disabled. That is good because I’m more than broken down, but not seeing that I am also disabled, that I am struggling just to keep up, negates who I am, and worse yet, ignores the fragile humanity of the latter years. Old age is feared because it is treated like a disability. I can say this because I recognize it, because I am there, because I want more from, and more for, my kind.

Growing older is nightmarish, but it also provides glimpses of how heaven is right here within reach. I think these glimpses, which reside in the failing sight of the old, and the disabled, are precious, and should be a regular part of our collective journey into mystery.

A Prejudice Against Leaders by Lucky

A tension is running through me. It seems to make a sound. That sound is growing louder. It is making me uncomfortable and anxious. I want to write about it, to explore what it is, but I feel more nervous as I get closer to it. That is usually a sign of how much ambivalence I feel. I know the tension says something about me, and I’m not sure I want to find out what. I am really nervous about letting this part of my experience be seen. I will go ahead, because I am that kind of fool, but I do so knowing that I have mixed feelings about what I am looking at. I am aware of how much prejudice against leadership I feel, and I am becoming aware of what that says about me.

It is deep in my bones. If you meet the Buddha on the road, kill him.  I grew up, in some ways, as one who learned to rely on myself. Some of my beauty is related to how much responsibility I have taken for myself. I like who I have become. All of this is true. It is only recently that I finally, after years of misdirection and suffering, came into my own. I have learned how to take care of myself. Now, I’m looking at how this hard won achievement is incomplete. I don’t want to relinquish and bow down to anyone. In so doing, I am seeing, I am unwilling to take responsibility for my deeply human partialness.

I want to be free of leaders, teachers, therapists, parents and would-be priests. I don’t want anyone standing between me, and the Great Mystery. I don’t like feeling small, undeveloped, inadequate, or somehow stupid and blind. When anyone has the audacity to presume they know or experience something more thoroughly than I, I usually don’t believe them, don’t trust them, and quickly dismiss them. I do kill them, but non-violently. They are still dead to me.

All of this, the indiscriminant killing, is my way of protecting myself against the unscrupulous charlatans out there, who would prey on my desire to be fully human. No body is going to take advantage of my developmental desire, my longing for wholeness. No more, will I hope that others will lead me to where I know I need to go. I know that is the only way one can go.

Oh but, I’m weary. So tired that I’m vulnerable. So tired that I make mistakes So tired that sometimes I wish there were someone else who could help me carry my desire a step further. But, if anyone comes close and offers in any way, I am deeply suspicious. They better be careful.  I am likely to turn on them. I want a teacher but he, or she, better not try to teach me anything. On the other hand, what good is a teacher who doesn’t? The truth is, I’m not very tolerant of either. I want to be fed, but primarily, only in my way.

I know this is true about me. I don’t like admitting it. I am so unenlightened, so human, so ordinary. I only admit it now to myself because I want to deal better with the prejudice I face each time I care enough to try to take on a leadership role. I’m also tired of being shot at, disparaged, reduced and otherwise mistreated. Trying to make a difference, and caring about those around me, is only partly vain, sometimes it is genuine. I can be human in that way too. But, I’m often wary of it.  I don’t like being the object of suspicion.

I know I have no real right to assume any role of leadership as long as I harbor the will to disregard others who are genuinely trying to help me along the way. I know I have no right to complain about being shot at as long as I hold a gun in my hand. I know I don’t handle it well, being the object of suspicion. It is precisely because I haven’t given up protecting myself in this way. I don’t want to go on and become the caring elder. Or, the leader, I could be. I am torn open. When it means letting go of protecting myself in this old way. Can I let myself learn from, rely upon, and trust an other?

I don’t have any say about the prejudice against leadership in the world. I will just have to learn to deal with it. I know I can start dealing with it better, if I am willing to begin right here in my heart. If I am on a course that will carry me ultimately into a real elderhood then I’ve got to trust myself enough that I won’t kill off the food bearers who are trying to help me along the way. Also, I know, I can’t really become one of them until I can admit their existence into my heart.

The journey toward elderhood has so many twists and turns to it. I keep meeting myself on this road. Strangely, I come in many forms yet I still have to deal with the same old one — me — if I’m going to make further progress along the way.

I notice too, that alongside the baggage of my old ways, the self I know, is a stranger, laughing, and accompanying me. I hope you are noticing something like him, or her, too.

What Makes A Difference? by Lucky

I’ve been dwelling with this question for a while.  Like any good, real, question it is taking me for a ride. What makes a difference?

Before I get into my response to this compelling question, I just want to extoll the value of a good question.  A really good question, such as this one, doesn’t have one right answer, and doesn’t lend itself to simplicity. In addition to asking one to reflect on a specific something, it asks one to let in the complex, incredible diversity of this world. That is what I hope to do, as I let this question lead me deeper and deeper into mystery.

My response to this question has been one that has unfolded. The question is still resonating within me. It is still provoking my awareness. Level-by-level I am discovering that I have very little reason to believe that I have any kind of response that makes the question go away. I am being skewered (changing one could say, the question itself is making a difference) by the uncertainty it is raising in me.

Initially, I thought this was a fairly easy question for me to address. I have been vocal and consistent advocate for community. On some level I know I believe that caring and real connection make a big difference. I have spent a good part of my life trying to restore the natural social habitat of our species. I really believe that our social nature, which runs wild in our feelings, is an endangered life form. I have spent, and probably will spend, the bulk of my life-energy working on behalf of this perception. I could compellingly argue about the importance of this issue. I have good reason to believe that community has big implications for our complex consciousness, our sense of belonging, and our future.

Therefore, you can imagine my surprise, when this question led me to a deeper more fundamental and miraculous realization. It was a week after I thought I laid the question to rest. I was satisfied with what I believed, and my efforts toward that end. Suddenly, I became aware that it wasn’t given to me, as a human being, to know what made a difference. I really didn’t know what made a difference. This was devastation to the part of me that was invested in community (in my own knowing). Miraculously, even with the loss of my precious illusion (and I could feel it/me dissolving), I experienced joy and awe.

‘Not knowing’ freed me. In ways I am still discovering. I’ve been pleasantly surprised by the miraculousness of not knowing what makes a difference. Where I think I might feel bereft, I am discovering the warm pleasure of coming to my limitations. The fundamental paradox that everything makes a difference and nothing makes a difference places me in a wonderful position. I can’t not try, nor can I necessarily make a difference. Instead of being disheartened by my own ineffectuality, I am instead graced to know that I alone am not responsible for change.

All I can do is ‘show up.’ That alone is not enough. Something more happens, if change occurs, it is something I can’t make happen. My presence, and the energy I put into making a difference, add up to increased probability, but they are not decisive.

Or, things might change for reasons I cannot fathom. I don’t even get to be aware of all of it, there is no intention on my part. What makes a difference then?  There must be some other kind of ripeness to change. Things happen, I don’t know why. Maybe I am an ingredient of that change, but I am completely oblivious of it. I make a difference (or, do I?) without knowledge or effort. I don’t notice, or know. Shit happens.

I like arriving at this realization. It lets some of me off the hook (of responsibility) and strangely puts other parts of me more firmly on the hook. What do I mean? I am not sure yet. Play with this question a while and see what it does for you. For me, it relieves me of thinking I am that important. Apparently, I’m not. At the same time I am sometimes.

This floors me. I don’t get to know when I matter. Thus, I want to show up for everything —  I might be a necessary ingredient.

‘Not knowing’ seems to make me a more effective advocate for making a difference.

I’m savvy enough to know that when I think I know, I probably don’t. Now, thanks to this question, I am learning that ‘not knowing’ is probably the best way to advocate for change. What is ripe for real change is most likely beyond me, and my efforts. Change, therefore, is safe from me, and more likely to be change for change’s sake. Then, how I respond is how I aid change.

Making a difference is, and is not, up to me. Instead of that disappointing news discouraging me, I feel freed, and less distorted by my own shortcomings. Change happens, Lord knows how or why. I want to believe it can be directed. That some law of the Universe applies. Knowing that making a difference is to some extent my doing, and knowing that it is not, somehow ties me more firmly into the mystery of it all.