Making Sense Of It All

It's hard to imagine a world where human life and experience is so blatantly disregarded, and our carelessness and indifference, in our treatment toward one another, is standard issue... yet, here we are.

This is not the same world many of us grew up in; Red Rover Red Rover, in the front yard til the sun set in the distance, chasing down dirt roads and stumbling upon adventure and dreams.  Phones hung on the wall, neighbors sat on the porch, families gathered around a table of home cooked meals and life seemed so manageable.

It's been a tumultuous month in the arena of women's health issues and women's rights.  The abortion debate exploded with a ruling in New York, allowing late term abortion for anyone, by anyone.  A tattered country already unraveling and divided by feelings, opinions, politics and religion, is teetering on a fulcrum of anger and intolerance.  This post is not about abortion and whether it's right or wrong.  It's about making sense of the suffering and anger in a tired and worn out world we find ourselves in. 

Bill Bullard,

“Opinion is really the lowest form of human knowledge. It requires no accountability, no understanding. The highest form of knowledge… is empathy, for it requires us to suspend our egos and live in another’s world. It requires profound purpose larger than the self kind of understanding.”

There will never be a shortage of opinions and most people will always be of the knee jerk variety who offer their two cents, to the chatter of the world as it crashes along the shore with the ebb and flow of nonsense.   We will never run out sadness, heartache, shock, even anger but beyond all of that, what is left, and....what really matters?

Profound Purpose.

Love.  Empathy.  Tolerance.

That is what really matters. 

We can never really understand what is behind all the anger and hurt that settles in around us but we can find, in the dust and ashes, beautiful surprises. 

We still have our freedom to choose for ourselves how we will revere life.  In the face of horrifying acts, we still get to choose if we harbor bitterness or radiate goodwill.  We can be the force for good, a band of love. We get to spread the benefit of doubt, see the good, be the good, rise above.  Women are beautifully strong, pillars of strength, with a grace and resilience second to none.  Women have a loving, profound purpose.  Don't let that get lost in the babel sounds of politics.

February is coming, the month to honor love, and the dark days of January will soon be a thing of the past, all 673 days of January!  Lets celebrate life and love, with an extra measure of kindness, forgiveness and hope, in the coming weeks and months.