Human Folly

I feel like I'm looking at the world from 20,000 feet in the air, and it's a tornado of violent hatred that is going to explode into something even more terrible. 

I'm praying people can gather their sanity before it's too late, but historically we suck at that. War, violence, rivaling beliefs, loss of rational thought, consequent death, suffering...these were never the only options. It's only that some have insisted on having it, and then others are forced to participate, when such things should never have begun at all. The minds that control our cultures are largely sociopathic and criminal and lead their followers into the same mindsets. I wish we could clearly recognize that. And I wish all humanity was capable of the most basic tenant of peaceful coexistence--live and let live. Why is this so impossible for some human beings? 

Humans really are just a bunch of apes, in the end, so many of whom cannot control their emotions or detach belief, fear and feelings from facts. God help us. We are still so far from being the best, gentlest, wisest versions of ourselves.

The Strength to Be Vulnerable

I recently read a quote about it being beautiful when someone stays open-hearted and loving despite having had their heart broken to pieces more than once.

Aside from the idea of beauty, I think that it is actually really brave and strong to do this. In fact, I think that we confuse frightened, closed off people for strong ones. We often perceive someone who is stoic and shut down as being strong. But honestly, I know how much courage and inner determination it actually takes to stay open enough to love despite knowing the tremendous pain that can come with it. Think of the courage. Think of the fortitude of a heart willing to try again, even after it has been betrayed or smashed or traumatized on more than one occasion.

I always considered myself a relatively open-hearted person. But as I've learned in the last 6 years, my psyche had its limits. I've gotten older, I've gotten wiser and more cautious. And yet, I still realize how much I've had to learn and continue learning about discernment, recognizing harmful patterns, letting go, self love and boundaries. 

Each time I've gone through some kind of heartache I feared that I would never be able to open up again, the part of my heart allowing such feelings seemed damaged beyond repair. I truly feared that the open, passionate, loving me was broken and gone. And yet, I healed, with caveats, and time, and was able to try again. A miracle. 

I pray that this remains the case now. I pray (and I believe) that I still have that kind of strength. 

It's easy to close off and recoil in a shell of self-protection after life has hurt you so many times. But I don't want to do that. I don't always want what's easy. I want what's good, however that looks.

My hope is not to be a stoic, shut down ice figure. I don't want to become like the very people who have hurt me. I hope I will have learned the right things from life's tribulations. The key seems to be learning how to trust yourself and your own worth enough that you are confident you can remain open to love while still making sound judgments to take care of yourself. You care for yourself and love and choose yourself first. You set your standards and refuse to compromise what you deserve. And then when you come from a place of that, you feel a lot safer to risk your heart again. This is a lesson I wish I had understood when I was younger. It's also a lesson I wasn't experienced enough to grasp. When you love yourself enough, when you solidify your worth, standards and boundaries, you are much freer to love, knowing that if you have to, you can safely let go of what is not for you.

I've had to step up to this comprehension. This was a building process for me. Again I am humbled by life, humbled by what I did not know and what I continue to learn, about myself and others. I will never stop learning. There will always be wisdom to accrue. I accept that. My prayer for myself, and for everyone I care about, is that our hearts remain overflowing, while our spirits and backbones grow solid as deep tree roots in their worth.

Rise or Fall?

I think that every nation starts to devolve and fall apart into explosion and ruin after enough time passes. Maybe it's human nature. Maybe the US has been riding the afterglow of its infant idealism and now its starting to turn on itself and crumble, as every great society has done throughout history, only to reform as something else, over and over again. Every more ancient country has endured ebbs of civilizations, free thought and intellect, only to be overrun with tyranny, back and forth, over and over. Many are more humble and less loud-mouthed now than the USA. And that's probably why. Human nature being what it's historically proven itself to be, are we really expecting America to act differently? Please.

Maybe it's the beginning of the end of American Democracy and a new era of something else...something more violent, closed minded, backwards. Perhaps not. Perhaps opposite. I don't know. And it might be a long, drawn out end, but an end seems inevitable.

In the long run, the human story has always been a tumultuous, wrenching and often miserable one. We can't help warring and fighting over the right to institute our religious beliefs, our rules, our desires upon the lives of others and society as a whole. Then people grow weary of being oppressed, rise up, and change things. Rinse, repeat, rinse, repeat.

It seems like, until we can learn to truly live and let live (not simply tolerate temporarily until we feel it's permissible to be tyrannical again), unless we can truly do this, the same old tumult and misery of human history is unavoidable. We have short memories for lessons learned. We're like twenty-year-olds who think they know everything, but what do we truly understand as we age? Only that we really don't know much at all. Humility is wisdom. Unlike any other species, humans have egos, and especially in America today, our egos are our Achilles heels. They drive us to fear, greed, apathy and war, over and over again. America is young. We're due some more growing pains. I just pray we make it past this self-destructive phase and learn to control our egos and reinvent ourselves well.

 The World Trade Center

For a few more weeks I'll be looking at the World Trade Center as I go to work. Pretty soon I'll be commuting in the opposite direction, away from New York city. It's funny because in the last almost month I've been working in Hoboken, I haven't taken much time to look around and notice things. I've been so caught up in the stress of this place and the pace of everything, so caught up in my anxiety and the pressing to do lists in my head, that I haven't noticed even the most spectacular things.  I finally find myself looking around now like I'm coming out of a haze and noticing a world so foreign to me and everything unique about it. I see the balconies of high-rise luxury apartments. I see the entire Manhattan skyline. I notice just how very close it is to where I am and wonder how I missed that all this time. I wonder how much, if at all, that kind of world will play a part  in my life.

#hoboken #manhattan #worldtradecenter

Adventures in Hoboken

Manhattan skyline from Hoboken. 

Life in the city is a different world entirely from what I'm used to. I love my quiet, my nature and green and space. I've definitely had to get used to a next level degree of stress and driving and people and noise in this region, but it's forcing me to up my a game with regards to how much anxiety I can push through and overcome. My adventures in Hoboken are only temporary, but they have changed me just the same. Had to pull out my inner beast to conquer my fears for this one.

Had another little escapade this morning. When I got to the street where my garage is for work, the police had barricades up blocking access to the road. I ended up basically ignoring the barricades and driving right around them. When I got to the construction workers and cops in the middle of the road, I rolled down my window to talk to them, heard the one guy say, "how'd she get past that?" LMAO. Sheer will, Sir. Plus that huge gap you left on the left hand side. Might want to rethink that layout a little. 

They were very nice, surprisingly...let me get into my parking garage. Moved a crane for me and everything. ;) 

That's my act of rebellion for the day. 

P.S. The bagels here will blow your mind

Leaving Seattle

Whatever else havoc and stress coronavirus and layoffs have caused, at the same time I've seen that life has a flip side to its coin. I've had amazing things come up for me in the music world and I know it's time to embrace them entirely.

I've been surrounded by an incredible community of people supporting my performance goals in ways I could never have seen coming, and I'm thankful for these new friends. I'm also beyond grateful for my old friends, who are like sisters to me and always will be.

My dream to move across the country and live close to my little sister and real opportunities in the New York area has come to fruition. I can't believe that in August I'll be leaving the Pacific Northwest. But it's real, and it's happening, and life keeps pushing me toward my dreams at more and more of a breakneck pace.

It's such a crazy time. None of us know what safety and certainty even feel like anymore, but I've been fighting to turn sand into a pearl and I'm thankful that some really good things have still happened in spite of everything. I'm definitely going to be documenting the move and everything I do afterwards. I'm sure I will need the moral support to keep taking those brave leaps!

My mind boggles at life's insistence upon changing, but I'm ready.

We Must Be Better People

I keep seeing the memes about what 80s babies have gone through as far as 911 + a recession + pandemic, etc. As an 80s baby, I cannot disagree. It's been a crap ass generational set of experiences! But I also know that the stuff folks went through back in the Spanish Flu + polio + World War 1 + depression + World War 2 era was juuuust as bad if not much worse. And yet the incomparable degree of sacrifice they had to make without whining, without rebelling, without protesting, is in stark contrast to our pathetic, selfish modern culture. when our people today can't seem to get it together and do what they need to for ONE major disaster, for the greater good of our people, it makes me extra disgusted and Hulk Smashy.

So many people utterly lack character now. Our culture is largely narcissistic, and it shows in everything we do, everything we refuse to do. It shows in the leaders we elect and the celebrities we admire.

I really miss my grandpa. I always have. But I can't help thinking, with his compassion and perspective and goodness, having served in World War II and been raised during a time of such poverty that communities didn't blink about supporting each other, that he would be ashamed of Americans today. And for that I'm sorry. I can only hope I act in a way, personally, that would make him proud in order to try and make up for that.

We must be better people. We just must.