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Who Are We?

In a way, we are what we do. Or what we’re doing. When I’m chopping kindling and making a functional sculpture, I’m a kindling chopper sculptor.

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In another way, we are what we are born as, and depending on what we experience thereafter, and how we respond to what we experience, we become who we turn into.

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Then there’s the matter of eating, and the matter we eat. We are eaters. Unless we eat, we die. In this way we are no different than banana slugs or giraffes or each other. And eventually we die even if we keep eating right up until the last moment of our lives.

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We decide to do things and wear certain clothes or not wear clothes or to worry about the horrible things humans are doing to each other and to the planet, or not to worry unless something horrible happens to us. Or we’re afraid to make decisions, afraid to change, afraid to take chances. Or we’re not afraid, but indecisive. Or we’re marvels of brave decisiveness.

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We believe things. Some of us love politicians others of us hate. Some of us believe anything certain people tell us and never believe anything certain other people tell us. Our beliefs don’t necessarily have anything to do with truth, but come from wanting things to be a certain way even if things aren’t really that way. Most of the biggest problems facing us today are caused by people with power over others wanting things to be how they aren’t.   

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We are generous or not generous. We can’t be both. When did we become one or the other? Can ungenerousness be reversed?

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Why did I want to write these words and share them with you? Because lately I’ve been feeling every living thing on earth, consciously or unconsciously, senses impending disaster, and I think this feeling of impending disaster is the Universe asking us to examine who we are and to see if we can do something, even the smallest thing, to help each other right now.

fin

Really Really You from Todd and Marcia’s album Through the Fire