The Aristrocracy of Rebellion

Hola mi gente,
I have to say that one of the consequences of being unemployed is the tremendous amount of stress. Stress kills and right now, I’m at the tipping point. This in spite of the fact that I meditate on a daily basis, am vigilant regarding the few principles I do value (so as not to add to the mess), and try to maintain an awareness of my frame of mind. Not working just saps me of energy.

It also impacts my passion, which in turn impacts my writing. For better or worse, in order for me to be an effective writer, I have to be feeling it. Stress just kills it for me. For example, I have an unfinished piece on Hillary Clinton’s email transgressions and I don’t have the energy to shape it up… Instead, I was feeling the following.

Why I Fight

Dorli Rainey, age 84, reacts after being hit with pepper spray during a protest

Standing for equality and a just society is hard work. In fact, it’s not only hard, but oftentimes not every rewarding. It certainly isn’t rewarding in the economic sense, that’s for sure. I will very likely die before I see a country where children won’t starve needlessly, for example. I probably will not live to see an economic system that works for the majority of the people and not the few. But, as Alice Walker said, “Activism is my rent for living on the planet.”

I might not even live to see meaningful electoral reform, or elections that aren’t won or lost by how much money a candidate can amass from the richest 1%.

Shit, I probably won’t live to see a time where we will all get together as a nation and have a real heart-to-heart on race and inequality. But yet, these are some of the things that I have stood for -- for a long time. Oftentimes with little support. Until very recently, in fact, people like me operated in silos -- disconnected from one another, doing impossible work with little resources and only reasoned passion to sustain us.

When people ask me why I bother to fight, I tell them the following true story. The thing is, as powerful as the story is, I almost forgot it. So I write this down so I will never forget. I write it down to honor the fact that I am part of a long and storied lineage of resistance and rebellion. I write it down so you can put it in your heart:

I was once marching in DC with tens of thousands of other protestors and on that particular day, I really wasn’t feeling it. I was tired. And what I mean by tired, was a bone-weary fatigue that was physical, psychological, and spiritual. I was there, marching and seriously reconsidering the whole mess. What's the use, I thought to myself. We’ll protest and tomorrow things will go back to normal. And the people who should be out here with pitchforks and torches will be watching reality TV or some such nonsense.

It was at this time that I turned to an elderly lady who had made the trip with us that day. She was well-known in her community, having been an elementary school teacher for decades. She was, like, everybody’s teacher, a universal mother archetype. And there she was marching with the help of a walker -- a woman that I knew that had marched in countless protests, from the Civil Rights movements of the late 50s on.

So I turned to her and expressed my doubt. I questioned the validity of protest and dissent. I expressed my uncertainties, my frustrations, and feelings of impotence. “Why do all this, Mrs. Robinson? It doesn’t make a difference.”

She stopped, turned to me and with a light in her eyes, she said, “If you’re a Latino, it’s very likely that you have an ancestor who fought for freedom and died fighting though they knew they would never see the light of a free day in their lifetime. Then she turned to a young woman standing next to me and said, “You probably have a woman in your past who fought against violence against women and for the right to vote, and for women to be treated as equals although she probably paid a great price for that struggle and she did so knowing in her heart that she would ever see the day where women would be treated with respect and as equals.”

She turned to a young white man and said, her soft voice tremulous with a fiery spirituality, “You probably have an ancestor somewhere in your background that got his head busted in by strike breakers for fighting for a fair day’s work and the right to bargain collectively. Then addressing what was now becoming a small crowd, she said, “In fact, you all probably have a long line of ancestors who fought for social justice and freedom though they knew their world would never be like that.”

“And you know why they fought? They didn't fight because they knew for sure they would change the world. They fought because not fighting meant that they would be a party to condemning their children to live enslaved. So when you march today, remember that you honor the sacrifices of those who walked before us. When you march today, remember that you are passing that honorable legacy to the children who come after us.”

Then she took my face in her old, gnarled hands and said, “Even if we never accomplish anything, Eddie, what matters is that we fought and struggled and stood for something, because the ripples of our actions today will reverberate and find seed in the hearts of the children where it will flower as freedom, or a yearning for freedom. It doesn’t matter if these clowns don’t change. What matters is what you stand for. Anything less is slavery.”

Since that day, I have never questioned my mission for social justice and whenever I get tired, I remember my teacher and her plea to honor my ancestors.

My name is Eddie and I’m in recovery from civilization…

Frozen Thinking

Hola mi Gente,

Last night, a Black Lives Matter activist confronted presidential candidate, Hillary Clinton, about her embrace of the myth and racist conservative dog whistle, the superpredator, and asked why she had never apologized. Hillary’s response? “No one ever asked before,” and then turning in a dismissive way and saying, “Now back to the issues.”

::blank stare::

* * *

Photograph of Crashing Ocean Waves Frozen in Time by Pierre Carreau

Frozen Thinking

Convictions make convicts.

-- Robert Anton Wilson

When I came across the above quote and I had to laugh for several reasons. One is the simple but elegant truth of the words, another because I am a former “convict” -- a person who was formerly incarcerated I also like what the great French existentialist writer, Albert Camus, said about convictions -- something about not dying for them because he might be wrong.

I am struck by the sense I get from both quotes: that rigid thinking, or adhering to rigidly held beliefs, choke creativity. Oh yeah, did I mention I am obsessing about creativity? One common theme I hear coming up constantly is people’s need for more creativity -- especially in the realm of work and relationships.

I hear it from people all the time: how they wished they could work at jobs where creativity is valued, for example. The irony is creativity is a choice that is available anywhere at anytime under any circumstances. If I were to allow it (and sometimes I do), my work could quickly morph into a dry set of rituals of paperwork, data, and rote knowledge.

Anyway, in the past I have written about the “enlightened” or open heart. Today I am reflecting on the opened mind. I would say, and I think it would be correct, that when people think of the creative mind, they think of a mind full of ideas and brilliant new insights. My own experience tells me the creative mind is both full and empty. It is able to create within itself a space for the new to arise. A creative mindset is constantly opening itself to the internal and external world.

My experience of the opened mind is that it can be relaxed and playful. It is filled with curiosity and wonder. The opened mind has a childlike quality about it. It loves to go off the beaten track, to explore paths not taken by social convention. Playfulness is important. The opened mind likes to play with an idea or object, and enjoys looking at it as if for the first time. Try this one day: take a walk around your neighborhood and pretend you are a tourist. How does your perception of the mundane and “normal” things you see on an everyday basis change when you do this?

The opposite of that playful quality is what I call frozen thinking. Frozen thinking is what you get when you no longer think of possibilities: 

“This place sucks.”

“My life would’ve been so much better without you.”

“I’ll never succeed in this shit job.”

Frozen thinking deals in absolutes, there are few, if any, possibilities in frozen thinking and everything seems to be set in stone. Whenever someone begins a sentence with, You never… or You always... you can be sure you’re in the presence of frozen thinking. In short, frozen thinking is the sum of all our assumptions and beliefs about others and ourselves.

The open mind remains receptive to the possibility that we may not know everything there is to know -- and what we do know may be wrong. It challenges assumptions, makes new connections, finds new ways of perceiving the world. The opened mind can wander joyfully into areas others do not take seriously, and return with creations that must be approached in all seriousness.

Some of the most celebrated creative minds in history have allowed themselves to drift into dreams states and extended meditations during which they have played with the irrational, the symbolic, the metaphorical, and the mysterious. Often they have returned with images that they translate into scientific theories, musical compositions, and transformative social actions.

I would like to point out that people often mistake obsessive thinking with creativity. Nothing could be further from the truth. Creativity entails dropping the mental rumination. There’s a lot of letting go in the creative process -- a lot of “emptying out.” Creativity is about not thinking (in the conventional sense).

This is a scary journey into the unfamiliar for me, personally. There are times some discoveries are so strange that I want to cover them back up and run. Whether exploring the depths of the human soul or the depths of matter, artists, mystics, scientists, people like you and I, come face to face with chaos and disorder. Still, the enlightened mind thrives on this chaos, sees the emerging patterns, respects difference, and remains open to the paradox of life.

My name is Eddie and I'm in recovery from civilization...