You have to love northern Minnesota (indeed, that is literally true because if you didn't, on some level, you'd move!) Here it is, Good Friday, and we had almost an inch of snow overnight and the windchill is -2 F. On Easter, it may snow, appreciable, shovel-able snow. It's that time of year when, if I spy bright green grass on television, I stare at it kind of hollow-eyed, like a crazy person. It's like, I cannot figure out what I am looking at. My mom used to watch The Masters Tournament each April, not because she liked golf, but just to see miles of verdant lawns and flowering trees. But even upstate New York wasn't quite this wintery in early-to-mid April. Oh well, it is reassuring on a certain level. Mother Nature is in charge, not us.
I'm processing everything under the sun, but the biggest thing is, knowing that people will think I am nuts, to be capable of even a moment's joy in the midst of current world events and climate chaos. I think I have figured something out about that. It's something I have been circling nearer and nearer, and started to refer to recently, but I think I finally have had that moment of reckoning.
All through history, men have operated violently, starting wars, killing random people on the streets, attacking friends and family, attacking the earth, creating situations where other people end up homeless, sick, and without food. No, it isn't all men, and sometimes women do these things too. And men create much that is good and beautiful. But overall, armed conflict is a male phenomenon. Perhaps because I never married (in this lifetime), don't have sons, don't have grandsons, and don't really have many close male contacts, I have the "luxury" (if you will) of facing something eye to eye; I simply do not wish to spend one more minute of this lifetime reacting or responding to the actions of men. I do not want to fix the messes they create. I don't want to attack them or stop them. I don't want to honor their heroes or fixate on their deeds, both good and bad. I don't want to be depressed because they choose to do something odious. Indeed, I do not want any more of my life to be "about" them until the day I meet a man operating at approximately my level. (At 66, I cannot assume that will happen this go-round!) And even then, I won't be willing to shift focus and lose myself again.
Phrasing it positively, what does this mean? I intend to act more and more from my own center, with my own agency and power. I intend to have sovereignty, even if only over my own body and a small energetic space around it. I intend that my life be about me and my genuine gifts, not what the male construct thinks it needs from me. I intend to gradually raise my capacity for joy, and not squelch it in solidarity with victims of violence. I intend "Yes!", not "Yes, but..."
Coming from my family background, this is hard stuff. Exceedingly hard. Does this mean I have become narcissistic -- or worse? Perhaps even more than many women, I may have surrendered my power and my inner flame simply to prove I wasn't heartless or unempathetic. I've lived in the limbo world of the bittersweet, trying to keep the balls of both happiness and sadness in the air, or in the future. In a duality paradigm, that may have been what was meant by "being human". But in the paradigm beyond duality, there is only joy, love, and beauty. This way of being will be as possible on earth as "in heaven". Contrast will be only that, contrast, a different color, not the enemy. Future Good Fridays may actually be good, not good because of an act of violence.
