Is the World Falling Apart: The Wisdom of Now

We as a civilisation will learn to unlearn the past where it has not served the future. The next generation are asking for us to change.

THE WISDOM OF NOW

Every human being has a story,
Every person is a professor of life,
For every moment we are learning,
Every moment is unique,
Our decisions formulate the shape of our collective story,
And the finale in the end.

Life is short as many grandparents will testify,
For they are at a point in time where they look retrospectively,
They remember the mistakes,
The good times,
How they may have changed decisions if they were to live again,
They tell me to seize the moment,
That love is the answer,
That life disappears in the click of two fingers,
With a kindly smile they retire into the comfort of an old chair to dream
about better times.

All visitors that knock on your door,
Are waiting for it to open,
For they have come with a message to give,
Yet many keep their doors closed,
And their televisions on,
And their lives busy,
For they have roles and responsibilities,
They are not seeking new friends,
Yet life sends friends especially when you are not seeking.

The wisdom of now,
Is to simply stop and reflect,
To be silent and calm,
To sit with yourself and do nothing,
For in the spaces between thinking,
Lives the greatest peace or dis-ease,
Given the decision you have made about life.

My decision has been to practice my truth,
To spend time alone,
To think about the metaphor of life,
To allow it to unfold,
Like macramé releasing the rigid folds,
To reveal the blank white paper,
To start again,
To unlearn what I have been taught,
To examine what is good and live it.

For peace is not ethereal,
It is not denial of truth,
It is not ignoring another’s feelings,
It is the courage to face what is so,
To look at yourself with kindness,
And gently think again,
For in every reaction there is an equal yet opposite action,
And we are the source of the world we see.

For clearly the world is falling apart,
Clearly the same mistakes are repeated infinitum,
The news stories have different pictures but the themes are exactly the same,
For conversations are mirrors of the media,
Debates are journal articles constructed to win the point,
Yet what is the point of winning?
Is it better to be right or happy?
The former destroys our nature.

Yet true happiness only returns to those
who know what is true,
And this is the meaning of life itself,
That unfolds rigidity,
That questions true intent,
That gives voice to misunderstandings,
Seeks to suspend judgement to understand,
So that you can be understood,
Is a spirit of peace and goodwill on earth.

Peace has been avoided for centuries,
For we have filled our lives with distractions
to maintain selfish pleasure at the expense of communal joy and celebration,
If we feel good we respond with delight,
If we don’t we ignore the others plight,
Yet seldom do we think of another’s happiness as our own,
For this is the essence of empathy,
This is the essence of comm-unity,
To stop working to feed a stagnant system,
And volunteer our time for free,
To give of ourselves with sincerity.

Now that is the challenge of our time,
For one must disconnect from fear and
re-learn to trust what life sends in faith,
For many the world is still flat,
There are no peaks and toughs in-security,
Non-violence is not the absence of violence,
It is the visibility of truth and justice in action,
The whole truth and nothing but the truth,
So help me god.