Where do I begin?

When we try to think about the difficulties surrounding us, we are overwhelmed. Where do we begin? And when so many experts and specialists are unable to do anything, to what avail one’s own efforts?

But are the problems really so complex as to elude personal comprehension? Perhaps we have continued to repose faith in others, the authorities, the leaders. The government, the experts, the knowledgeable people … And when we are confronted with all the immense problems, we automatically tend to think of these as inevitable, or insoluble, and something within us closes, or even dies.

Therefore we should seek to look, think and understand for ourselves, using our own intelligence, good sense and life experience to guide us. Things would then appear much simpler.

The analysis would be quite simple, almost too simple to be true. But that is what leads to the discernment of the true complexity we are locked within, which the explanations of specialists only serve to obscure and obfuscate. Certain things should happen, but are just not happening. Certain things should not happen, but they just go on happening. And at an immense scale. People are responsible. Ordinary people. The same people who at other times would complain about this or that. We lack any accountability. Anything can pass here – something that is inconceivable in most households and families. Its as if there is a great scandal happening, only no one is concerned, everybody goes about acting out their own role in this gigantic scandal.

In such a context, self-integrity and self-accountability have to be sown in the soil of people’s sensibility.

Things cannot just continue as they are. This can only lead to the most devastating, catastrophic outcomes. And there are signs that this devastation has already begun. So there is an urgent need for all those who cherish a humane future, for themselves, to act now to enable that possibility to remain alive.

The children of this ancient, exhausted, grieving land - their elders have failed them. So they have to awaken, separate themselves in spirit from the degradation and corruption all around them, ascend to conscience – even as they continue to live and function amidst their squalid surroundings – and assemble, join together and work together to save their land for its future generations. They must be fired by high ideals and infinite compassion. And it will be a long haul, so they have to be outstandingly strong, tenacious and resilient.

Image: Brick Clamp, courtesy Cultural Resource Analysts, Inc.