There's Still Time
I can’t recall every choice I’ve made over this lifetime, decisions that may have been easy or difficult as a child or adult, or been the right ones or wrong ones, but I did, in fact, make them with the knowledge and best thinking I had at the time.
One thing I feel lucky to have learned early in life is this:
“Everything is connected. Everything is energy. And our choices lead to an outcome.”
I’m reminded of a college level course in communication I took just after graduating from high school. The course required a project to articulate my point of view that everything is connected and that everything is energy. My constructed model of several styrofoam balls in various sizes all connected by plastic straws was perhaps not the best demonstration of my argument, and clearly professor had not been a fan of my elementary design. But hey, screw him, what did he know anyway?
Today we live in a world where interdependence is understood by most at some level. The food we eat is from all over the planet, we can live in Bali and work for a company in Portland, and as we learn more we better comprehend just how we rely on each other, our natural world, plants, animals, water supplies, and trees that aid our sustainability.
The knowledge thereof is therefore critical to continue our inter-generational journey together.
I met a woman in that communication class who I had a felt sense would relate to my thoughts about “everything is connected and everything is energy.”
At the time I was reading the book Are You Really Too Sensitive by Marcy Calhoun. It was a breakthrough to the young sensitive artist part of my self, a guidepost for the 19 year old gay boy trying to break out from the pseudo religious republicanesque family, (although no one in our family ever spoke about politics or who they voted for) other than by the clearly stated criticisms and lack of support for young artistic types.
Every. Thing. Is. Connected.
Marcy’s book was the game changer I needed and led me to explore and expand upon those theories about energy.
I gave the other sensitive in my class the book, she thanked me and we went on our way. So, the moral of my story here is even if my project model wasn’t “successful,” the class itself proved my point successfully by the exchange of information and energy we shared.
Here’s a little extra information on shared energy, interconnection, sensitivity and perceptions. We are called Highly Sensitive People. Sensitives, by the way, are defined here.
Many people will unknowingly make the mistake of lumping anyone outside the “social norm” as whatever group they consider the checkbox for those of us they can’t label.
Often misunderstood by folks, I like to say we are all just poets interpreting the world around us, walking through one set of circumstances only to begin again on the next—educating and validating each other on the way. I sometimes say, jokingly not jokingly, I had to teach my parents to say I love you, so now I teach love.
The natural world is a world of full of beauty. Nature has the power to heal us and us, it. We don’t always see or acknowledge it and many times we ignore, even abuse it and take from it, for our own symbol of power to show others what…who we are?
Sensitives make the connections. We feel the devastation, the deforestation, the defragmentation, the imbalances of life. We feel the lights go out and the tears people cry. We feel as deeply the beauty as we do the pain.
The message today is not to blame but to help eliminate or transcend suffering.
And just for today, it may mean that we see it and acknowledge it and that’s OK.
We don’t have to have all the answers, or fixes, but we do have to acknowledge it. That is our truth—what is true and real in each of our lives, whether we are together or apart.
Suffering is real and the sensitives feel it.
Buddha said “I only teach dukkha (suffering) and the transformation of suffering.”
I believe similarly, perhaps, that’s the teaching of the HSP.
Recently I listened a clip on Instagram where, I’ll paraphrase, Reese Witherspoon said people can be broken into three groups. One group supports you completely, want to lift to up and help you be the best you can be, the second third have no investment either way, they are neutral. And the last third either consciously or unconsciously want to take you down. She offers to seek out the first group. I agree.
I mention Miss Witherspoon’s advice as part of a solution to the sensitives observation of the world. We may be tired and we may feel isolated from all the devastation we see, sense, feel in the world, but we have a solid group of people trying to do the right things.
That’s the base for unity to grow.
The message is to direct our energies into healing.
Direct the energy into healing our hearts, healing our souls, healing our neighbors, healing our oceans, our planet, our children.
We don’t need the biggest house or the most money for the greatest opportunity. The greatest opportunity exists today not in diluting our compassion but in investing in our empathy. In strengthening our creative and energetic processes and in strengthening our connection to each other.
We are not perfect people, but we are perfect beings.
I think one universal problem is that we don’t know where we stand as a collection of peoples. Who are we?
Are we divided or are we united and for what do we stand?
We have to figure this out. We have to unpack the chaos and disinformation.
The future we can be a beautiful thing, and we can all be free but that will come from the choices we make today.
To fully embody the parts of ourselves that came to Earth in the first place. What is the fullest expression of who we truly are?
In Buddhism we are told of the three poisons—greed, anger, and delusion. We can easily point to them outside of ourselves, but maybe it can be helpful to ask ourselves three questions.
What do I try to fill myself with?
What is the source of my anger?
What do I frequently miss that might help me see more clearly?
We can learn and teach each other about causes of suffering and we can learn and help each other end suffering too. Looking around at all the skills in the world, and the means by which people acquire those skills, I only see possibility. We have more than enough to transform our suffering—not just our own suffering, but everyone globally.
Can we do that?
Yes, absolutely!