Denial

I’m not fat.

Did I do that?

I don’t have to pay taxes.

It’s not my problem.

Those people are why I don’t have a job.

I have good genes I can’t get cancer.

The weather will get better.

I’m a winner.

Nobody is looking.

My husband has a second job, that’s why he works late.

She’s just in a mood.

Rehab will help.

That charity does good.

My pastor would never lie.

Covid is a hoax to take away my freedom.

Truth makes everyone who can hear it uncomfortable.

Too many of us prefer to be comfortably numb.

So many issues plague us daily. 

From personal to national, it is understandable why some of us want to shut it all out.

There is a wolf at the door.

Unlike the big bad wolf, this creature will be with us all for the rest of Time.

Covid will be here, but the creature I’m referring to is denial.

Denial is the effect.

The cause of denial is the willful ignorance of fact.

No democracy, no nation, no people, no community can peacefully exist when ignorance is put into a place of honor.

The burden of a healthy society is to care for the sick.

The sick include not only those with failing physical health but also those with failing ethical health.

Our brothers and sisters suffer from anxiety of uncertainty.

They fail to consider their responsibility for their own suffering that they have created in their imagination.

They fail to consider that their health, happiness, and freedom are born out of securing those rights for others and themselves.

We rise together.

We fly together.

We reach together.

We overcome together.

Walk away from the dark comfort of denial into the bright community of truth.

It’s your choice.

Peace

Toby aka Daniel J Frey

Immune

Walking by a local restaurant, I see people enjoying their immunity. 

Apparently, they are immune not only to the COVID-19 virus.

Our brothers and sisters are immune to society.

Immune to community.

Immune to compassion.

Immune to brotherhood.

Immune to love.

How did these people get their vaccine?

The answer is Blowing In The Wind, written by Bob Dylan.

He asked, how many roads must a man walk down before you call him a man?

How many years can some people exist before they are allowed to be free?

How many times can a man turn his head and pretend he just doesn't see?

The answer appears to be hate is seeded generation after generation.

By people, humans who believe they are doing good work.

Mothers and fathers.

Brothers and sisters.

Churches, schools, governments, police.

All keep the story alive.

The great white myth.

I'm telling you here and now if you don't know this in your heart of hearts already.

People have been making up stories to keep them from seeing reality since before recorded time.

They have told themselves these stories so many times that these tales are embedded into the human psychology.

In the Hero's Journey by Joseph Campbell, "Myth is much more important and true than history."

Human's capacity to believe in their own myth is limitless.

They will believe in ghosts.

In Leprechauns.

Their team will win a sports championship.

The 2nd Amendment can't be amended.

Tom Hanks eats babies.

White people are ordained by God to rule the earth.

The only balance to myth is truth.

Yet truth is harsh, and myth is smooth.

Truth goes against our expectations, and myth feeds our prejudices.

Some of us are lucky to be born able to see the beauty of the world.

While others have turned down that privilege and have focused their sight inward.

They don't want to know about the cannonballs flying.

They don't want to see the man beaten down in the street.

They don't want to hear people cry.

Just as hate is seeded every generation, so too must love be grown in every generation.

Any gardener can tell you it's a continuous battle against the weeds.

We have to tend the garden of truth to keep out the weeds that would choke it out.

If you have hands, lift; if you have ears, listen; if you have a voice, speak up.

If you have a mind, love.

Peace.

DFrey