Spending a lot of time on a history lesson is not something I am going to take on. We are, after all, facing something unprecedented in the United States, so a plan of action is what should be on everyone’s mind.
We might need to spend just a little time thinking about our history though, just to put things into perspective and to get focused and motivated.
Our first President, George Washington, didn’t have a “party” as such and was only assigned the label of Federalist Party after he became President.
Before that, what we had were a group of people (albeit men get the credit but behind all good men are good women) who were united in the purpose of creating a new country. Think about that for a moment. How pioneering. Are you prepared to be that pioneering now? Because that is what is getting asked of us; that we pioneer (or perhaps it’s that we finish pioneering) our Country.
We need to be as motivated as our Founding Fathers were about creating the Country that we want and the only way we are going to move forward is to figure out how to move past labels and hurling insults at each other. The viciousness I witness on Twitter is reprehensible, and the labels and name calling are beyond the pale. People seem to spew hate so quickly, and so many times it’s just an exchange of mirrored hateful energy, neither side seeing they are reflecting the same exact traits as the people they are hating or trash talking.
It’s sad that we have put up these walls. If we could get past the walls, we’d discover we have much more in common than not. We’d realize that we are One when it comes right down to it. In spite of the appearance of separateness, in fact, we are connected to everyone and everything.
What we do individually impacts everything around us. When people are suffering, through our connection to all, we are also suffering. This connection is why love and compassion are so important to cultivate.
When we’ve fully awakened to our surroundings, we understand that everything we see is colored completely by our perceptions, history, and experience. What we bring to the moment colors the moment, just as what another person brings to that same moment colors that moment for them. What you create when combined with another is called co-creation, and it is what everyone is doing all the time, and most are unconscious of this fact.
We may not have control over what happens to us, but we always have control (or can choose to have control) of how we react to what happens to us.
This is what living intentionally is: Learning to choose your response in any given moment or second.
