It’s a strange time here in the world.  The always present elements of the absurd & the tragic seem more pronounced as of late. There’s anger, outrage, a sense that we’re approaching the flash point on any number of issues.

And there’s something else. A sense of revolution. The feeling that maybe we as humanity care again. That we’re paying attention, or at least starting to. It’s not the first time in history that’s been true, but for humanity as a whole, it’s been awhile…

We’re beginning to stand up again. To look up. To lift our heads and really see. The changes that have taken place on streets we drive every day. The places we could be making a difference instead of passively watching from our cars, our couches, inside our own heads. If we haven’t yet started to connect again, we’re at least seeking it, noticing that it’s something we’ve all been missing. Even those who seem to be pushing away are still reaching for others as they go, trying to protect themselves from being left behind by the tidal wave of a world moving forward and lurching strangely as it goes.

We’re waking up not just to a connection to one another but to all of it. We’ve drifted apart from our humanity through convenience and apathy and a perceived lack of time. We’ve lost our place as part of this world, our connection to all that’s alive. We distance ourselves from suffering and destruction and oppression because we can. We even justify it as righteous or necessary, a special type of cognitive dissonance that can only happen at a distance. Because it’s easier than acting and far easier than allowing ourselves to feel it. We close our eyes and our hearts to the visceral because we don’t have time for what it requires of us.

But something is pushing up from just under the surface. It’s punching through the perpetual fog in which so many of us have lived. The question is, where will it take us? This moment in history is as beautiful as it is ugly. We’re showing our extremes, our failings and our hope, our fallibilities and the rawness of our honesty; we’re showing our cracks and the places we’re bound together.

Small explosions are happening but the big one could rock us all if we’re brave enough to let it, if we can remember that for most of us, the issues that divide us are tiny compared to the many that should unite us. Will we close our eyes and fall into the chasm it creates or will we ride the broken pieces to somewhere beautiful?