When You Rise Above Your Fear

The root word of history is story and the key may be to recognize how everyone's story is linked to everyone else's to build the larger story of we are and how we came to be. We are, I believe, accidentally communal but that's not how we began.

We are born alone and more often than not, that's how we die. It's what we do during the space between that defines not only our story but that of our family, friends, our circle and sphere of influence. We work hard to avoid dismissal by Macbeth as nothing more than 'a tale told by an idiot, full of sound and fury, signifying nothing.'

We band together in societal approved/recognized units, be they hamlets or states or nations (or more) and we strive to have writ large that which we do and make it synonymous with that which we are. In modern times, with all due respect to The Little Tramp, the danger has become being possessed by our possessions.

The pool ain't in but the patio's dry. The more you have the more you can lose. But the math works the other way as well and in recent years across huge expanses of our interlocked economic sectors (at levels that transcend religion, gender and nationality) the losses have mounted and all efforts to staunch the bleeding have failed. Where are the Snowdens of yesterday? In the belly of the plane, cold from loss of blood which precedes a loss of life.

I was raised to be polite and do what I was told, when I was told. Somewhere, someone changed the deal, not just my deal, but everyone's. And added to the dirty double cross, if you will, has been another 'no talking' and 'no talking back!' rule. For almost a month, ignored, then mocked, then disparaged and now, slowly and finally being recognized and feared, the Okies and all the other dispossessed and disenfranchised have been massing at the gates of the castles.

In cities across American and around the world, many of those who watched the Arab Spring waited until quite late in the day to offer their own version, an Eternal Autumn, where values and virtues we thought (feared?) to be lost are being resuscitated and resurrected. No one knows all the answers, or even more than a handful of the questions. This may be A way, but maybe not THE way. And maybe that's not important anymore or ever again.

It comes down to "Where you work and where you play, where you lay your money down. What you do and what you say, the revolution starts now." Where it ends is for someone else to decide.

-bill kenny