Daily Choices
Each day I face many moments which confront me with the question: “Will I choose freedom or bondage in this moment?” Each choice is either an act of revolution that contributes to the overturning of the systems that limit and oppress humanity; or it is an act of complicity that weaves another strand in the web that keeps such systems intact. The only step I can hope to see with any clarity is the small step in front of me at this moment, and even that is often blurred by my mental conditioning and ambiguity. But, when I do allow myself to see clearly, I cannot avoid the dilemma these daily choices present.
The fundamental acts of courage that will be required of me to live out my convictions will not be grabbing a rifle or stepping up to the barricades. They will be small unnoticed acts of stepping away from a medical monopoly that masquerades as health care; from an insurance complex that pretends to grant security; from agribusiness that purports to provide nutrition; from a government whose constituency is corporations; from the media which sells gladiator games, bread, and circuses and calls them information and entertainment; and from the military-industrial complex that sells death around the world and calls it freedom.
I don’t know the precise forms these acts of courage will take. They will be idiosyncratic and responsive to the particular situations in which I find myself. I already find myself in at-risk situations and my conditioning is pulling out all the stops to convince me that I am crazy, irresponsible, and foolhardy. “What will you do if…?” I am being asked by my entrenched mental pathways as they try to convince me that I cannot really give up the habits, beliefs, and so-called securities upon which I have come to depend.
Here is the tipping point which all would-be revolutionaries face: will I step into an unknown future in which I might be destroyed by the forces I oppose; or will I step back into an uneasy compliance, hoping someone or something will someday set me free?
No one (at the moment) is aiming a gun at me to force me into line. The forces I must encounter are far more powerful than loaded rifles. I face the conditioned stories of a lifetime that I have internalized as truth about the way I should live, eat, work, and entertain myself; about the meaning of success and failure; about my relationship with planet from which I was emerged and on which I live; about my country and its myth of democracy; about my life and about my death. You see my difficulty. I want to eat the cake of my life, yet still have it available to me in all the forms upon which I have become dependent.
I cannot tell another person what they should do next. I cannot make rules for myself or others to replace the rules that no longer serve. I can only share the things I see within myself as I move into what seems to be a “Grey Panther” stage of my life. One thing I know for sure, this is damn hard work. I would rather sink back into the comfortable illusion that what I have been told is actually what is: that I can spend my way to happiness, work my way to satisfaction, and kill my way to safety and security. But once a lie is known, it can’t become the truth again. I have to keep on going, one step at a time, and learn to trust again the power of the Tao within me.
At the present time I am exploring my relationship with diet, economic security, health care, technology, and vocation. I have added a new page to this website to share the resources I have found helpful along the way. I will keep you posted as I continue to explore this Path, this “Tao,” that is leading me into lands I never dreamed I would encounter in my lifetime. It’s nice to have company along the way, isn’t it?
