Bright Lights

Before and Behind

This morning the moon was so bright that I could literally read a book by it.

That means that, even though it’s dark, on the other side of our Earth the sun is shining as brightly as ever.

When we sleep, we’re giving our earthly bodies a much needed rest. Although this seems ultimate and definitive for us, it’s relative when compared to a greater cosmic whole.

It’s also relative when put in context with the behavior of our siblings around the globe, who are experiencing much different (although also very similar) lives.

Many (if not most) of these lives experience much different economic realities. But though they are different, many (if not most) of them would like to have basic comforts provided to assist them with experience.

This fact means that their leaders, like ours, will try to find ways to work toward gaining these comforts for them, for better or for worse. (Whether or not those leaders want them to have those comforts out of compassion, or out of a desire to win their political fealty.)

However that shakes out, the result will be the use of a lot more carbon, and the expulsion of whatever exhaust that entails.

It’s something to be aware of because, as we all know and have heard countless times, we only have one Earth.

That singularness of sharing one thing with strange familiars is also a source of connection — of shared interest, shared fate, shared “resources.”

It’s an expression of commonality with one another, although it’s also an expression of our commonality with other beings — say, trees. Say wales. Say tigers. Say elephants. &tc.

I don’t mean to express a sentimentality. I’m more trying to point toward a real truth.

I don’t have any idea what that means going forward. Our political systems, although they hold roots millenia-old, are essentially 20th Century in practice, and they all carry a sensibility that holds a very narrow hubris as it relates to human ingenuity and capability, especially as that relates to the rest of Life. (What a small piece of Life we are.)

My only suggestion, if I have one, is to hold these ideas, if for a moment or two each day, that they might influence our thought and speech.

I try to practice “Right Thought,” and “Right Speech,” which is a large part of why I abstain from alcohol. It doesn’t make me smarter or more virtuous. I practice it more out of humility than I do out of prideful certainty.

I’m thinking of you, whoever you are. I’m thinking about what your experience of waking will be, today. What your encounters will be like. How your mindbody will feel as it encounters others.

I hope that it will be manageable, that whatever anger you experience doesn’t manifest as physical or verbal violence, that the provocations of your conversations will have the harmony of a common aim.

That’s all I can really hope for. Out there in the darkness, beyond this halogen moonlight, I know that all variety of affliction festers.

If praying to the One works for you, I hope you find a moment for that practice today.

May you be well

May you be peaceful and at ease

and may you be happy

— Plum Village, “Loving Kindness”

Affectionately,

Aaron