Observations

Have you noticed how time is moving more quickly? Are you noticing that more things seem easily forgotten… quickly becoming irrelevant when in times past, they would have seemed essential to retain? Can you feel the degree to which what once mattered, no longer does?

As a species, we’re changing. Our planet is changing. Our future is changing. And through it all, what continues to beckon is our individual and collective potential. Tapped or untapped, its natural, corresponding impact will become our unfolding destiny.

Living with a foot in two worlds: the one that is unfurling before our very eyes and the one that we’re habituated to hoping will unfurl. They don’t match. Have you noticed?

When you stand back far enough; when you climb high enough, the view changes significantly. You can notice patterns and flows that, when standing in them, become invisible. However, once you see the patterns, clarity becomes a choice. We can then, choose from that clarity or not. Truth be told? Gaia doesn’t care.

I have zero interest in the climate change blah blah because I know it does not/will not make a difference. The behemoth that is the Planet has already carved out a path and is moving increasingly faster along it. This momentum makes turning the Queen Mary look like a split-second, precision move from the flick of a wrist.

We keep looking to someone (anyone!) else – the government, the corporations, the politicians, etc. – to make a difference.  In truth, the most powerful force in it all sits in your wallet.  If you and I don’t buy it, they won’t make it.  Pretty simple and deeply intimate and personal.  It’s not rocket science.

Everything is connected to everything else.  Stop one purchase (like factory-farmed beef, for example) and a string of dominoes begin to fall.  But that first, intimate and personal choice – with its intimate and personal consequences – must be made.  It’s not about the planet – it’s always been about us.

I have long held much interest in human evolution. Sadly, the vast majority of humans I’ve met have little to no interest in (their or anyone else’s) human evolution. They’re busy – caught in the whirlpool of doing the business of the culture. They have come to believe that the power of their choices lives in the next purchase… the next car, trip, flight, shoes, suit, etc…. rather than in the next breath. Some lessons, unlearned, will come back to haunt us.

In a recent conversation about whether or not to procreate, I found myself saying things I never dreamed would ever come out of my mouth! Things like: if you choose to become a parent in today’s world, you must be highly resourceful in the deepest of ways. Resourceful in ways that will allow you to move through watching diminishing resources for your children’s growing needs; watching your children be terrified by their surroundings; struggling with being able to reach your children in highly stressful circumstances; struggling with knowing you cannot protect or provide for your children; and potentially, watching your children die. I was aware – 30 years ago – of a profoundly changing planet as I pondered creating new life. These same questions lived in my own potential-parent line of enquiry. That was then… and today, we live in a far more evident decline. Personally? In today’s world? I would have neither the hope nor the courage to choose the creation of a new life.

I learned long ago: my time is my life. Where I spend my time, how I spend my time and with whom I spend my time becomes the quality of my life, being lived. I learned to choose wisely whose company I would keep and what conversations would shape my days. We become what we talk about. Now, in today’s ‘reality’, I choose to talk about human evolution – my evolution, your evolution – as the absolutely essential element as we face into the times that are to come. There is a direct link between the pattern of our ‘humanness’ and the way we express it in the world we create. We are now reaping what we have already sown. Perhaps it’s time for us to learn how to plant something else.