Me: Conscious memories seem to have started some time around year 4 or 5. Perhaps it is before that where a priori comes from. But really, the camera starts rolling 24/7 at that point. Creating a relentlessly inescapable first person perspective. I have led a pretty fortunate life. Done some pretty cool stuff, and unfortunately some uncool stuff. All of which resides in the past. In memories. Well at this point, memories of memories. At night, they return. Stirred and shaken. Jumbled and recombined.
I lie awake in an attempt to disengage the Monkey Mind. I try focusing on the untruth that is duality and I stand at the edge of the abyss, peering in, waiting for the colors. They come in whorls and patterns that can’t be focused on. Always moving and changing. But I can’t focus too much. For it is only softly, softly does one catchee monkey.
I tell myself “I am made of sand on a raining beach.” I listen past the roar of misadventure’s tinnitus, and I hear the forest symphony. An amazingly random and infinite loop of crickets, insects, spring peepers. I am told it is a “sonic hallucination.” It’s always running in the background. But could it be just another jumbled childhood memory - recreated from summers past, sleeping on a screened porch cot or lying in bed with the windows open? It is like the colors, beautiful and uncontrollable. This is the platform I am on, as I try to let the train run through the station.
You: I see you. You are individual. Simply put, Not Me. One easy way I can tell, You don’t look like Me. That’s OK. I am not frightened.
I try not to judge You or label You despite what seems to be the natural tendency of the Monkey Mind. Even if successful I feel a primal need to assess whether You are friend or foe. I understand your camera has also been rolling too, but since I haven’t seen the whole movie, it is difficult for Me to fully appreciate your perspective.
I suspect You think quite similarly to Me, functionally at least. For clues, I can only observe your actions and attempt to communicate. However as George Bernard Shaw once said, “The single biggest problem in communication is the illusion that it has taken place.”
Your conclusions are not always the same as mine. Also OK. You have accomplished things I never could. You occasionally amaze and inspire Me. And sometimes the opposite is true. From your perspective, You are “Me.” Only different. Me and You. Both extras in each other’s major motion picture. I wonder: What does your abyss look like at night? Do You look? Do You hear forest symphonies?
Us: I have never been much of a Joiner. But occasionally, I have something in common with You. We agree on something, and probably not everything, at least temporarily. That allows Me and You to become Us. As a tribe we are greater than the sum our individual selves. Man cannot play baseball alone, for example. During Us, we tend to ignore the differences that would otherwise divide Us. Otherwise we cease to be.
Them: For some reason if You are not a member of Us, You must be Them. As a group you may look like Us, but clearly there is some important difference. Unless of course you abstain from whatever the difference is, in an attempt to be neither Us nor Them. But by doing so, You just get bundled together with the abstained non-joiners, and also become Them. Just a different Them.
Back in the day, being Them was OK. Even with our differences, there seemed to be a basic understanding, more fundamental than Us and Them, or Me and You, called Civility. Respect for others. Apparently though, Civility disenfranchised a large quantity of the population. This group has tired of quietly living with their dissatisfaction and feels the need to forcibly make a course correction. Never has it been easier for Me to not be with Them.
Several years ago, in the sea of jumbled memories, I had a dream. In it, all of humanity suddenly knew and understood each other. Kind of like The Borg in the rebooted Star Trek (which was otherwise lame except providing that analogy. And they were kind of creepy.) There was a beautiful harmony among the species. There was no Them, only Us. We acted in our collective best interest; we all knew what that was. Everyone contributed what they could, and if for some reason a person couldn’t, that was OK because we knew everyone was doing their level best. We took care of each other.
These days, it seems humanity is unable to even agree on what is best for itself, much less act together to improve our collective well being. And to make matters worse, it’s as if all the loudmouth, bullying idiots from childhood are taking over the asylum. Truth should not be subjective. Superman’s American Way is not the same Great America they are trying to recreate. And don’t get me started about justice.
No wonder I’m trying to get back to sleep - at least I can dream there.
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