I'm in bit of an existential rut. I get it, this pandemic has everyone a bit loopy. As a introvert, I don't really mind the time alone in my Brooklyn apartment, for the most part. The problem is that it gives me too much time to think. Too much time to contemplate the state of the world. And it plays over and over in the mind like an old Chinese water torture...drip, drip, drip...right between my eyes. I have too much time for navel gazing and you know how I get...a bit muddled to say the least. I've been reading light novels and re-watching Farscape for escapist fantasy. But I've reached my limit with escapist fantasies. What happens when one has reached their limit? That's right, reality comes crashing through and rudely interrupts to gain one's attention. I watch way too many hours of CNN. It seeps into my brain matter and sucks away any semblance of hope. I look at the state of the world and it fills me with despair, the soul-wrenching kind. Even now as I type these words my throat is clenched and my eyes are filled with unshed tears. I feel the rage of injustice coursing through my body.
I have learned in my studies that these times are cyclical. We will forge ahead and create a new reality as the global consciousness is raised to the next paradigm. Change is painful only when we a grasping to the old ways. There are people who want to unplug, remove themselves from the pain but what they don't understand is that they are not separate from this web of reality. We are all interconnected. We are part of a larger community, we are part of a global community. And we sorely need better leaders. A community of leaders who will blaze through these troubled times. Leaders who will light the way through the darkness, not for their own selfish reasons but for the good of humanity. I've been feeling too cynical for too long, hence the existential rut. I want a better vision for our future. My nieces and nephew need a better world, a place they can sink their teeth into, a better tomorrow.
From Paulo Freir's Pedagogy of the Oppressed, he writes, "In order for the oppressed to be able to wage the struggle for their liberation, they must perceive the reality of oppression not as a closed world from which there is no exit, but as a limiting situation which they can transform....it must become the motivating force for liberating action." There is so much work to be done. More to come.
-L
