Counter World Clockwise

“I used to scream out loud at God and question, why he hated me.”

                                                                 Sara Adyms - Today

A smile, a tear, a laugh, a sob…

Acknowledging our humanity; the hardest thing some of us ever do.   To admit that we fumble, to admit that we falter, to admit that we stumble, to admit that we are imperfect.

It’s a terrifying thing to do.

We teach that we need to be independant, and so success is garnered by this measure; yet how can we measure up?  In truth, what we are teaching is the inability to ask for help when it is needed.

To ask for help, makes you needy.

To cry, makes you dramatic.

To hurt, makes you weak.

To need comfort, makes you dependant.

To have faith, is to be gulliable.

 To have dreams, is to be foolish.

We lack the ability to be patient with those who reach out for help, I think, because others have never done so for us.   We lack the patience to be supportive, because we are needing that support ourselves and don’t know how to reach out for it.

…It really is a mad little world; here’s to admitting it.

“to mend the bruises of my spirit.”

                            Aria Sharp - The High Cost of Living

Time changes everything, including who we are.  Without regret, who are we?   If there was never a failure, then what would we have left to learn?  In life, there are tears, regrets, pain and sorrow.  We must learn to understand that everything happens for a reason; even the things that cause suffering, or loss.  It is a hard thing to grasp, and perhaps we are not meant to.  In the beginning, we would rush to change things, to undo the events that hurt us so; but in the end, we must learn to understand that it is not our place to do such.

We are made better for our sufferings, and that is why we are here.

You cannot truly appreciate something unless you are made to realize just how valueable it really is.

We all wish horrible things would never happen.  We long for our loved ones returned, for the unexusible genocides and tragic mistakes of our history to simply not be, to have never existed.

But we must learn instead, that we have no way of knowing what could have been, or will be.   To change what has already happened, you risk changing who you are, we are.

 …And for better, or for worse, that is not our right.   We do not understand the expanses of time, and to think on such a primitive level is to do injustice to ourselves, and to the universe itself.

On a more basic leve; for all the things I wish I could have changed, I will trust that I am better off having made the mistakes, and hope to have learned from them than to wish them away.

We choose our actions; there is no time machine, nor should we use one.

…so perhaps we should learn from the past as well.

“This is it”

       Aria Sharp - Past times.

Sitting in the grass and seeing nothing but the sky, the sun, and the dandilions that you would all too happily pluck from the ground and much to the distgruntlement of your neighbors, take a deep breath and blow those little white puffs all over the place.   Make a wish and blow, then count how many little spores are left; that’s how many kids you were going to have…or how many days would pass before your wish came true.

 Even the poorest of children will find some sort of whimsical game that somehow makes any day brighter, if even for a moment.  There were trees to climb, dirt hills to conquer or swampy marshes or ponds to sludge through.  There were woods to adventure in, cornfields or grasslands to hide in or a street to play stickball or street hockey.  There is rock collecting and flower picking.  Fairy chasing and monster tag…wizards versus dragons and racing just to see how fast you could run.  Bugs, Dirt, Sunshine and Germs…you just didn’t think about that kind of thing when you were younger.

 …Growing up just seems to ruin everything.

 Because now we give our children video games and television..or they have jobs.

 Don’t get me wrong; I grew up on television as much as anyone.    I’d like to think that the shows we watched when we were younger actually made a little more sense however…and if there was nothing on T.V. we would always just play outside.   We still drove our parents nuts, and there were always chores to do.

…But something is going away; it has been for awhile now.

 Free -  Time is being whittled away, Gym is stripped from school programs, playtime saturated with agenda and television is still our babysitter with fast food restuarants being our chef.  We shove standardized testing down the throats of our children, listen to whatever the radio has to say and blindly follow the leader without stopping to question the true morality of it all.   I think if we could pull our heads out of our asses for a moment; we might be ashamed…but I can’t really tell, since there seems to be wax in the ears of those who would normally listen.

The world has never been more obese, more unhappy or more lost.

We really are lost, you know…

And I just can’t help but think how much happier we would all be if the entire world could forget reality for just enough time to play a game of hide and seek, drink some sugar-water and take a nap.

“Stop the clock, inhale and breath”

                                    Static - Aria Sharp

There is such a dangerous, dangerous line that must never be crossed; and yet we do it constantly.

It is easier to be angry than it is to forgive, and it is easier to hate than to love.   It is the strongest, bravest person in the world that can forgive someone who would return that sympathy with hatred instead.   It is the most pure of all souls that can look at someone who has done great wrong and instead of wishing harm upon them, simply hope that they will one day understand the wrongness they have done to not only the world, but to themselves and seek to right the wrongs they have created.

 The need to be loved, admired, held, understood.   There is a need to be nurtured and there is the compulsion to try and fill the void that is within us from our birth…a purpose.   Apathy is our greatest sin, and the true destroyer of humanity…If one cannot feel, then one is already dead.  Everyone complains about how messed up the world is, but does anyone do anything to fix it?   What do you do to make things better? …what should we be doing?

It is incrediably sad when I hear someone state that nothing matters…because that isn’t the point.  I could explain, but instead I will just quote Garth Brooks, who truly got it right with his song “Changes”

And that’s the real point.  

 I will never give up on the world…because there is always something worth saving.    Even if it is only one small thing.  That is where we go wrong in the world, I think.   We’ve got it all backwards…the world in general has it all backwards. 

We think of things as how the bad outweigh the good and if this is true, then it not worth saving.   Shouldn’t we instead, see the good that still exists, even with the bad, and then realize instead that there IS something worth saving?  There is always good somewhere, if you can open your eyes to it…but you must be willing to see it.

 Sticking your head in the sand and claiming you only see certain things is not only unjust but wasteful.   It is something done when someone is convinced that they are right and everything else is wrong…it’s blindness in the face of realization that if they opened thier eyes, they could no longer hold the same opinion because they have seen something that proves their conclusion wrong…and it is easier to be blind than it is to see.

Being blind, you don’t have to change anything; you expect the world to confirm to your vision, even if by force.

…But to keep trying, even when everyone else would have given up?   That’s something.

 That’s worth something.

“Sorry, but I have, Love for life”

                           Violent Blindness -  Aria Sharp

I was reading a collection of writings from Isreal and I could not help but think of a classroom debate that I had in the fifth grade and how even then, the unmistakeable signs that define left from right, and right from wrong in the eyes of the beholder; even at age 10.

We were studying Geography, and Iraq, Iran and Israel came up.  At this point, we had only learned of Africa; the Lower and western regions that African American’s, (Blacks)  and when Iran, Iraq and Israel were explained to us; we then had to split up into two debate teams and debate the following.

 Group A had lived in a country for thousands of years.  Then Group A left, and Group B moved in.

A Thousand years later, Group A came back and demanded that group A had to leave.

 Group A demanded that group B leave and Group B demanded that Group A leave.

They could not live together and both felt it was their land.

…Almost all of the classroom declared that Group B should leave.

 I argued that Group B shouldn’t have to leave because it isn’t group B’s fault that Group A left, nor was it Group B’s fault that group A came back and it wasn’t justified to say that Group B had to suddenly leave thier home that they had lived in for a thousand years, and now it was just as much thier home as group A’s.    I then said that Group A shouldn’t have to leave either, but if they absolutely refused to get along and group B was willing to, than it really should be group A that had to leave, since they were the ones refusing to share and had no right to demand something back; but I felt they should both be able to stay and just accept that they were different.

 I was one of the only ones who argued this point; unable to see how everyone else, including the teacher could accept that group A should just get the land back.   I fet that if group A couldn’t tolerate group B, that group A should have to leave.   I also felt that if group B was the one being intolerant, than they really shouldn’t have any right to complain since it was Group A’s land in the first place…and if anything, they should have a common bond in that they were both driven away from thier homelands to begin with.

I didn’t really convince anyone else, but I remembered being confused at the end of the day.    

 It made sense to me as a child…what should it matter what we believe, as long as we remember that we are all human beings?  Why did people feel they had to have it thier way or no way?  Why couldn’t they share?  Why couldn’t they compromise…or why couldn’t they at least be tolerant of someone’s right to exist as they are?

I realize there are religious fanatics out there of all sorts who would flip out and start screaming about righteousness, but the sad thing is, I’m not even that religious and even -I- understand that god does not ask us to kill in his name.

God does not condemn us showing compassion to our enemy, and god does not codemn us for showing tolerance in the face of intolerance.   God only asks that we live our lives in a certain way…and this is true of almost all of the gods that I have studied.  

Never does it say anywhere that god is pleased when there was death…only life.

Never does it say anywhere that god is pleased when we murder in his name…in fact, nearly all of the gods I have researched ask that we respect life and that the greatest sin we could commit is to kill in his name.

God is not a murderer.    So, why then, can’t anyone else seem to remember this?

 I have a theory for that too.

 There was a clear and solid ‘right and wrong’ in our eyes when my class had learned of slavery; the conclusion being of course that it was a horrible thing to have done to another human being.   

When we had learned about slavery in fourth grade, I had then in return, remembered with distinction the discomfort of our teacher trying to explain our American History…glossing over that we massacerred thousands of indians in order to justify our own wants for what they had and what we wanted.   No one wants to acknowledege that the first “Americans” to America were murderers.  No one wants to be the bad guy, and so we glorify ourselves so that it looks as if we were justified to do the horrible things that we did.   That’s what all of this war is really about…making someone else the bad guy.

 And that’s the real truth.

 It doesn’t matter what you call yourself.  Republican, Freedom Fighter, Baptist, Athiest, Christian, Jew or Muslim.   When you justify striking down another human being so that they can’t disagree with you about what you are, or what you think is right…you are a failure.   A punch, A word, A gun, A bomb; If you cannot stand face to face with someone who would dare to believe something different than you and still see them as another human being; you are a failure.

 It makes my soul ache to know there is that much hate in this world.

 Because I look at you, and I see someone who lives, breaths, thinks and wonders; I see life…despite the monster of hate that lurks beneath your eyes.   Ther was once, when the hate did not consume you…

 When the hate did not consume all of us.

but then we grew up; and became stupid.

…So desperate to not have our children point out that the emperor has no cloths on; we’ve taken to brainwashing thier innocent minds early; disguising the truth in stories designed to make them believe one side is right and the other side is monsters.

 …I say, that in god’s eyes, we continue to fail.

 After all; we can’t even admit our own mistakes.

“Another moment passes by you, darling.”

                     “Almost Free - Aria Sharp”

Who are we but to wonder who we are in the face of everything we know when there is so much that we do not?   I’m not really sure what the answer is to that question, and I’m not sure that anyone really does.

In theory, we are only theory; doesn’t anyone get tired of all of the questions we don’t even try to answer anymore?  Why have so many of us have lost the rationality to exist without the instant gratification of anonymous belligerency?  Who are we trying to prove something to in the first place?  Does it matter that in the end, it doesn’t matter?  Shouldn’t it be the question, not the answer that is most important?  Shouldn’t it be the attempt, and not the result that deserves recognition? 

 Who would we be, if there was no one to judge us?  Who would we be, if there was no one to watch us?  Who would we be, if there was no one to answer to?  Who would we be, if we were accepted for who we were when there was?

 Who would we be, without fear?

 …Dream.   Believe.    And take back what was meant to be yours.

 Speak.