LIVING IN AN AGE OF FREE FALL

Rome fell but we don't have to.

There are times in life to create output, and other times to be inwardly preparing for whatever comes next. I’ve been on a kind of sabbatical over the last three months, not because I consciously set out to do that but because my body and spirit demanded it. I’ve needed to be quiet, and in case I hadn’t gotten the point I even contracted laryngitis. I appreciate my Substack community for support when my voice has been still as much as when I’m writing or speaking.

Many of us today feel something changing within ourselves, as we subconsciously sense that like snakes we need to shed an old skin. These words of Eleanor Roosevelt ring true today: “These are not ordinary times.” The times have changed and we need to change with them.

In order to respond adequately to extraordinary times, we need to break free of our ordinary routines. This doesn’t necessarily mean our behavioral routines, so much as our emotional and intellectual ones. The world will not change unless we do. This isn’t a time to cower…to play victim…to blame everything on others…to rely on someone else to do our thinking for us…or to disavow our responsibilities to other people, the planet, or our great grandchildren. It’s also not time to look the other way when to learn about something would probably mean to be confronted by painful truths.

The effort to repair what’s been broken and to create a better world begins within. It entails a profound internal gear shift from old ways to new, from giving ourselves permission to be shallow to demanding of ourselves that we plumb our own depths. American popular culture is not a conduit for depth, yet only there will we find the seeds with which to regenerate the world.

First, we need to cultivate quiet. The chatter of the world is cluttering our minds, and participating in it clutters it further. In the words of the Dalai Lama, “To save the world we must have a plan, but no plan will work unless we meditate.” Whether our practice of disciplined quiet is meditation, is not the issue. What is the issue is whether we learn to be still within ourselves, to reflect, to deeply and carefully consider our words and actions. For that makes a tremendous difference in how we show up in the world. It’s the most powerful corrective when both our inner and outer worlds have gone off the rails. The problem is not just what people have done; it’s who we have been, that we would have even considered doing what we’ve done. The evolution of our personhood is the core requirement for bringing us out of the mess we find ourselves in now.

But we can’t just look inward. We can’t adequately respond to what’s going on unless we know what’s going on. Educating ourselves is a first principle of non-violence. Does that mean we should doom scroll all day? Of course not. You don’t need to see fifty videos about the same problem to recognize the pattern they reflect. With a lot of things today it’s wise to look, but not to dwell. If you stare for too long at videos of human brutality, for instance, your nervous system begins to crack under the weight of the horror. Particularly horror at the fact that it’s happening here. Yet if you don’t look at all, you’re not in transcendence; you’re in denial. These are very serious times and we must be very serious people. No more kid stuff. No more ditzy. No more playing small.

We have had for years such a shallow politics, focused on symptoms but not cause, short term fixes but not long term solutions. None of that will get us out of the mess that we’re in now. This truly is a time of the citizen activist - people coming up with different conversations than those imposed by political and media gatekeepers. I’m impressed by much of the content created on social media these days, with a particular bow to the many women who refuse to stay silent in the face of assaults on democratic and humanitarian values now perpetrated by this administration. But at a certain point we can’t just keep stirring the soup. We need to do more than that. We need to move the needle.

Many have compared today’s America to the fall of Rome, and it’s not an incorrect comparison. In some ways it’s almost eerily too correct. Rome fell not only because of its own internal contradictions and compromises, but because it was invaded by barbarians. And we have been too.

The fact that modern barbarians wear business suits rather than trousers and tunics doesn’t make them any more civilized, because they are not. In the words of Mark Twain, “History Doesn't Repeat Itself, but It Often Rhymes.” And it’s rhyming now. Goons disappearing innocent human beings off the streets, traumatizing and terrorizing whole groups of good people who have actually been following the law, is barbaric. And the people who are enabling this, creating the new American despotism behind it - they are barbarians too. Don’t let all that gilt fool you.

American democracy is essentially in a free fall, the traditions and even Constitutional principles that have guaranteed the basics of our liberty now smashed in some cases to smithereens. They were weakened first by our own complicity with accumulated compromises of our ethical and political values, both personally and politically. America, like ancient Rome, was already weakened before the barbarians ever got to the gates of the city. Then the gates opened way too easily. The barbarians had a very easy time destroying things once they got in.

Yet history does not have to repeat itself, as long as we learn the lessons inherent in the rhymes. This is not ancient Rome, but we can learn from its mistakes. Within each of us lies the key to our renewal, our moral redemption and democratic repair, because each of us can rethink what went wrong. There is a portal of possibility by which we can save our country, admittedly thin but filled with light. We were born for this hour. It is why we are here.

Gandhi said politics should be sacred. He did not mean dogmatic or doctrinal in any way. He meant coming from the depths of ourselves, from a place within us where there is a light that is not of this world. We need an anti-gravitational forcefield to break America’s free fall. That means thinking and acting in ways that are higher, more enlightened, more reverent and dedicated to love than the reptilian nature of traditional politics. Be alert for ways to participate in its creation, seeing every encounter and every circumstance as an opportunity to grow. Prepare yourself for your part in a historic overcoming, because that is what this is. Darkness exists, but Light pays no mind. Angels are the thoughts of God - of love, of justice, of faith in a Higher Power - and they will break the free fall if we allow them to work through us.

I remember a book of fairy tales that I read when I was a child. The hero had a Sword of Truth and a Shield of Virtue. Such is the need, that we take up ours.