Turn It Down

Commercials scream at you.

The music bounces off you.

The sneer on a stranger’s face at you.

Turn it down.

The heat in politics is too hot.

The coldness in those who signed up to protect us.

The silent majority.

Turn it down.

Life today is so loud that we can’t hear the voices all around us crying for help.

You don’t hear them?

Did you think the poor, the hungry, the people living in fear just went away?

Did you ever think that you kept turning up the volume in your life so you didn’t have to care?

You take the kids to practice.

You watch your team.

You get high.

Drunk.

All of it, and more, so you don’t have to hear the noise.

A person said in the distant past in a land far, far away, Tune in or drop out.

Having your life’s volume set to 10 is nothing new.

If you are a human, it’s understandable that there is only so much you can bear.

What with earning a living, life events, the world is a hectic place.

What I’m telling you is if you don’t stop and listen, your life will end up being…

…

Nothing.

Everyone has a purpose.

Even you.

They may not want to know what it is and spend their entire life screaming so they don’t have to know.

But even the loudest voice in the room has a purpose beyond existence.

Right now, out here in the real world, you can hear a storm approaching.

The rumbles of thunder spread across the fruited plain.

It’s a voice in reaction.

We who can hear have been called out to fulfill our purpose.

The voices that called us out are the voices of our past, wanting to maintain a status that’s impossible to restore.

But hell, they are going to try even if it means destroying 250 years of democracy.

By turning down the volume of our lives, we can hear what the future is bringing and what the past wants to hold on to.

If we don’t turn it down, we will suffer a clash of expectations.

A past that believes it will live forever.

A future without wisdom.

Turn down the volume and listen to the cries for help.

Peace

Daniel J Frey aka Toby

Stand

What are you doing with your life?

Have you tried standing?

Think about it…

Don’t think too long now.

You only got so much time on this earth before your gone.

What are you doing with your life?

What do you stand for?

You stand for the National Anthem at a sports game.

You stand in line to get a burger.

You stand in line at the Post Office, the DMV, the grocery store.

But that’s not standing.

To stand means you are willing to do what’s right in the wrong time.

You will stand and hold back the darkness.

You will stand in the gap between life and death and say I stand here in the name of love.

Damn, is it all as dramatic as that?

The simple act of saying hello to a stranger is breaking with the tradition of sitting down and doing nothing.

Yes, simple kindness is a stance against intolerance.

But it’s only the beginning!

Sitting down, doing nothing, not my business, not my own is the food that the monster of indifference feeds on.

What are you doing now?

Have you tried standing?

Standing lets you see the world for what it truly is.

What it truly is there are no guarantees of happiness.

There is no savior that will release you from your personal bondage of the mind.

The only person who will set you free is yourself.

You.

When you stand you will feel maybe for the first time in your life what freedom really means.

The fear of freedom is real in all of humanity.

The darkness of indifference is the disease of our shared humanity.

To stand breaks with the past.

To stand breaks with selfishness.

To stand breaks with the compact with death to embrace the living.

You're not alone in being afraid to stand.

Imagine...

Just imagine with me if an acorn was afraid to grow?

Imagine that acorn lying there in the dirt saying I’m not going out there the world expects too much of me.

I can’t do that.

But the acorn can’t do that.

The earth, sunlight, and rain, the circle of life instructs that seed to break it’s shell, to stand, to grow into a new life, to freely give shelter to the life that takes refuge in it’s arms, the life it deserves, the life it is meant to have.

Only humans deny life.

Only humans deny the voice of love calling their name.

Pity the fearful.

What are you doing right now?

Have you tried standing?

Peace

Daniel J Frey aka Toby

Where Is Love

You can’t look for love because love has to find you.

You can’t make someone love you.

For love to enter your life, you must do the work to be ready to receive it.

Today, the analogy of a seed planted in a field still holds truer than ever.

Imagine you want love to grow in your life.

You can’t just drop love on your life and expect it to grow.

No.

You have to prepare the soil.

You have to get rid of the weeds.

You have to turn yourself over, breaking up your hard-packed ideals.

You must compost compassion, empathy, and the water of life within yourself.

This isn’t done overnight.

It takes a season to prepare yourself to truly receive love.

Once your soil, your life is ready, love will find you.

As love grows in your life, you will soon realize you have to keep up with the maintenance of your garden.

You have to keep out the weeds that will creep back in.

You have to mind the pests that will eat up your life.

You will have to water that garden every day for the rest of your life for as long as you live.

For this reason alone, so many brother and sisters turn their backs on love.

It’s too much work to participate in life.

They blind themselves to compassion.

They dull the feelings of empathy.

They ignore the voices all around them, preferring only their own voice.

These brothers and sisters who have rejected love have always been here.

Hate is not a new phenomenon in this world.

Hate, like love, also needs help to grow.

For hate to grow, it first needs fear.

Fear feeds hate, which grows into anger.

Hate needs someone to blame.

Hate thrives on lies.

Hate multiplies when irrigated with ignorance.

Hate blooms when it matures into a bully.

A tyrant.

Do you see how hate has grown in our shared world lately?

Ask yourself.

Where is love?

Where are you?

Peace

Daniel J Frey aka Toby

Happy Place

Where is your happy place?

When you listen to the voice of love, it will direct you to the place where your happiness is.

Ignore that voice at your peril.

When we try to live our lives in silence, darkness has a way of roaring into our souls.

When we tell ourselves, 'Tomorrow, yes, tomorrow is good enough,' we imperil our connection to life.

Where is your happy place?

Folks, tomorrow is not good enough.

When a person is drowning, you don’t say I’ll get back to you tomorrow.

Let me think about it.

Let’s not be in a rush.

The time is now!

Now is always the right time to do right.

Now is the hour when we listen to love and find our happiness.

Now is the time to help those less fortunate than ourselves.

That doesn’t just mean the poor.

No.

It also means those who are blinded by hate.

It means to reach out to those who can’t hear people cry.

Talking to those afraid of the future.

It is only through giving of ourselves that we, in return, are given grace.

Happiness.

Where is your happy place?

Wish you love.

Peace

Daniel J. Frey aka Toby

The Ask

The difference between good and evil is that good asks and evil tells you.

PATTERN RECOGNITION TEST:

Goodness will ask only once.

Evil will search for every possible loophole to avoid doing what is right.

An example is don’t kill.

Evil will say, except for war…

Except for peace.

Except for race, for culture, for religion, for nationality, for crime, for birth, or just because the son of a bitch deserved it.

Goodness will ask us not to steal once.

Evil will say, except if you are an employee, an employer, an investment company, a charity, a religion, or a vulture capitalist.

A parent ignoring their child.

The ask comes at us every day.

Just like the old angel and devil on the shoulder routine in animated comedy shorts.

Goodness asks us to do the right thing.

Evil says it’s a waste of time, nobody cares, you deserve what you have, don’t share, what did they do, nothing, keep what you got, you’re a good person.

Don’t be a sucker.

Notice again the pattern.

Goodness asks once.

Assumes you are an adult and can remember to do the right thing.

Goodness assumes you don’t have to be constantly reminded to do good.

Evil is the adolescent mind looking for those loopholes so it doesn’t have to do any chores.

Yeah.

Yeah, doing right is a chore.

Doing right is not always convenient.

Evil knows this.

Evil leaders, whether in the world, in your circle of friends, in your family, evil knows you don’t want to get involved.

Take it easy, don’t worry; it will work itself out. Time will tell. You’re a great person; everyone knows it. You deserve what you have. What did anyone do for you? Blame those people!

Remember this…

The next time you are listening to someone come up with multiple reasons why they did something, why you should listen to them, they are most likely not acting in your best interest.

Only their own.

Freedom, liberty, and justice take vigilance.

It ain’t easy being free.

Someone will always have a shit load of reasons why you should take it easy.

Let your freedom go.

Blame.

Watch for the pattern.

Drop hate.

Be hope.

Peace

Daniel J Frey aka Toby

The Call

Love is calling you.

When that guy cut you off in traffic.

When the old woman drops her change.

When people march in the street for freedom.

Love is calling you.

Over there, the child in the classroom who never smiles.

Over there, the woman buying groceries doesn’t have enough money.

Over there, a people are fighting against a regime that seeks to own them.

Love is calling you.

Can you see the girl with tears in her eyes?

Can you see the boy with old shoes?

Can you see the immigrant fleeing their home for the unknown?

Love is calling you.

Every day, the only voice we hear is our own.

We cut out the noise.

We cut out the distractions.

We take, we consume the thing that will make us numb.

I got mine.

Go get yours.

Bluntly… even the king of beasts doesn’t think that way.

Even the lion shares its food.

But we humans don’t.

Our supposed higher ability to reason has cut out the middleman.

Love.

Love is not even on the table for more than half the human race.

Half of us only think of love on a birthday card.

The card we received.

When was the last time you actually sent a card and said I love you?

When was the last time you gave flowers for no reason other than love?

When was the last time you heard the voice of love?

I’m here to remind the human race that it has a significant problem with love.

Humanity loves to hate.

If humanity didn’t love hate, the world wouldn’t be in the dark hole it finds itself in.

Love will lift.

Love will lift not only others but you as well.

Humanity has never truly trusted love yet.

Humanity trusts its own monster, which it created, called selfishness.

In the dark corners, it finds comfort in what the monster of selfishness feeds.

Selfishness makes us blind, deaf, and mute in the face of need.

Yes, this is a needy world.

It’s a needy universe.

Better get used to it, human beings.

If we ever want to make the world better, the monster of selfishness has to be reckoned with.

Until then…

Until then, you will never hear the voice of love call you.

Can you hear it?

Peace

Daniel J Frey aka Toby

Strange Things

When you carry the light of truth…

The darkness will come to put it out.

The darkness is drawn to the light.

But doesn’t like it.

Doesn’t accept it.

When you carry the light of truth…

You are a target.

You are the focus of forces that will attack you.

Humanity fears truth.

When you carry the light of truth…

You are a reminder of responsibility.

Responsibility to the lost, the broken, the sick, the ignorant, to those in want.

You are responsible for what you do.

What you represent.

How you are remembered.

When you carry the light of truth…

The forces of hate will growl at you.

They’ll take a bite and see if you will run.

But like an eight-year-old running through a crowd, hate losses focus.

Hate hates everything, which is why it spins and bites even at its own tale.

And yes, I mean ‘tale’, hate will destroy its own story if it conflicts or interferes with getting what it wants.

Every day, no matter the weather, the temperature, what has happened in my life, or the world, I take a walk.

My adult son joins me, and we traverse this corner of Burbank and Toluca Lake in a mile and a half circle.

I’ve come up with a theory, which is as good as any, as to why strange things happen to me on these journeys.

You may or may not know that I died back in 1977.

I’m not supposed to be here; I’m supposed to be dead.

Ever since then, the world has prevented me from fulfilling my dreams.

From telling you what’s on my heart.

It’s thrown every conceivable roadblock at me.

It’s stopped me from working for Disney by eliminating 2D animation.

It stopped me from being a marine artist by destroying the fine art print world.

It stopped me from being a film and TV concept artist due to one industry strike after another.

It stopped me from being a TV executive producer due to intellectual property theft.

I could go on and on.

The dark forces of the world, power, greed, and indifference, have stopped me at every endeavor.

Yet I still hold my light up.

On my walks, strange things happen to me.

Strangers stop me and start talking to me.

They tell me their life stories.

The homeless stop me and compliment me, not knowing me, saying I’m doing good work.

Dogs run up to me like I’m their lost friend.

Cars constantly try to run me down, even on the sidewalks.

Branches fall out of trees, and I have to jump out of the way.

Solicitors,  no matter what they are hawking, approach me and beat me with false platitudes.

Can’t say this enough, cars keep coming at me even if I’m standing on the sidewalk.

Maybe it’s just an LA thing.

There are just too many things thrown at me to list.

However, I’ve come to believe that the few words of truth I have, drop hate be hope, attracts the stranger things of this world.

It’s like dark energy; everything in the universe has a trail, a length of chain it drags behind itself, composed of dark matter.

From galaxies to human beings, everyone drags a chain of dark energy

When you carry the light of truth, I imagine you snag the dark energy of the world and pull it along behind yourself.

These things and worse can happen to you, too.

When you carry the light of truth.

Join me.

Peace

Daniel J. Frey aka Toby

Movement

What moves you?

A song.

A word.

A touch.

A feeling.

Friendship.

Kinship.

Love.

Anger.

Hate.

What moves you?

Crisis.

Justice.

Freedom.

What moves you?

Can you be moved?

Can you hear?

Can you read?

Can you feel?

What moves you?

Love pushes, but we resist.

Love pulls us, but we run the other way.

Love talks to us, but we turn up the noise.

Love touches us, but we numb ourselves.

Humanity is a strange beast.

A collection of opposites is this beast.

No single description can fully capture the essence of humanity.

We are hot, cold, fast, slow, brilliant, dull, visionary, blind, musical, deaf, dead, and alive.

All these attributes on a body of indifference.

What moves you?

What moves you?

Peace

Daniel J Frey aka Toby

The Many

The enemy of peace is the middle.

Traditionally, we think the enemy of peace is the left or right.

But to think that way, you have to be either on the left or the right.

You’ve had to make a choice.

You’ve had to participate in life.

However, people who have decided to stand with the left or the right are substantially fewer in number compared to those who sit in the middle.

The tapestry, or better, the quilt blanket, which humanity turns out to be, is mainly constructed of threadbare fabric.

Fabric that just gets the job done and no more.

The bright, sparkly bits, the sequence, the gold and silver fringe, and the rainbow of colors are all at the edges.

Humanity is a majority dull wet blanket.

Humanity doesn’t want to participate in its future.

It doesn’t want to honor its past.

Humanity just wants to exist.

It wants to be left alone.

Period.

Humanity doesn’t want to make choices.

It doesn’t want to know what’s bad, what’s good, what’s new, what’s old.

Humanity doesn’t want to fight evil, hate, anger, prejudice, racism, or fascism.

Humanity, the many, couldn't care less about freedom, justice, and truth.

The many.

That is the many who do not care until it kicks them in their ass.

When they personally have lost their jobs, their orgasm, their favorite TV show, their freedom.

Then the many care.

That’s the reason why Admiral Isoroku Yamamoto lamented the attack on Pearl Harbor on December 7, 1941, when he said, “I fear all we have done is to awaken a sleeping giant and fill him with a terrible resolve.”

It has been understood for thousands of years, by some of us, that humanity, at its core, is a dumb, sleeping giant, content with knowing nothing and doing nothing.

But if made angry, the sleeping giant will awaken and smash everything, including both the good and the bad.

That’s what we are up against: those warriors of the light, wanting a better world for all.

The right, the fascists, the nihilists woke the sleeping giant, gave the giant a red hat, and promised it could go back to sleep once America was great again.

The giant with the red hat is now confused.

The giant with the red hat was made a promise that it could feed on the blood of Democrats.

But the boy who gave them their red hats has told them, “Never mind, it was all a dream.”

All a dream…

The giant with the red hat is still angry.

The giant with the red hat still wants the blood it was promised.

What will the giant with the red hat, the many, do now?

Go back to sleep?

Or smash?

Peace

Daniel J Frey aka Toby