Above All, People.

I love people.

A lot. They are my favorite.

This love leads to heartbreak, disappointment, fulfillment, and joy. Parents nurture and cripple. Siblings support and undermine. Friends enhance, detract, come, go; some endure. Enemies.  Allies. Strangers. Acquaintances. People are horrible. People are wonderful. People with all of our yin and yang are by far, and I mean this with every bit of bombastic verbosity I can muster, the most important thing in existence.Period!

I believe in this human preeminence, past the point of feeling, over into the realm of knowing. It is at the heart of my narcissistic self-centeredness. Because I am a person I love me, but it also feeds my selflessness, because you are a person too. I am an I, as well as a we. With people lies the power to create, destroy, uplift and oppress.  Humans are the creators and curators of art, music, architecture, civilization, and war. It is and will always be above all else, us.

Nature does not grow out of itself and mechanize, then choose to return to itself. People do, have, and will. Animals with all of their anthropomorphic wonder, for better or worse, often consume each other but do not commoditize or domesticate each other. They express and communicate but there is no literature. Wind, fire, water, and earth often destroy mankind, but none of those things consider themselves. Some of us do.

I believe we should consider each other more often and deeper.

I see people over there and sometimes I wonder but more often I move on. But they are still over there and whether or not I want it, they matter. They, you, we, affect each other all the time. Humans do not exist in vacuums metaphorically or in reality. We humans are capable of pretending and often do so when considering ourselves and the roles we play in society when we would be better served to embrace each other.But embracing is risky and hurt is real and regular. We are in fact dangerous.

So is gravity.

Let’s get to know each other.  Please? All of us.

Let’s be in each other’s homes, eat together, live, share, and grow. All of us. If we do, some of us may be hurt- in every way possible. That possibility is inherent.

But if we ignore each other that possibility moves on to likely and then becomes inevitable. 

For Christmas I Want More Christ-like Behavior: from everyone

I like stuff, especially nice stuff. Sometimes I focus on “stuff” or things, because inanimate objects can be subjected to scrutiny without rebuffing the scrutinizer. People, or society, do no such thing and not only despise scrutiny, but too often dish it out in inhumane ways. I may be guilty of this myself, but for today’s Christmas wish I’m ignoring my own faults and look at others.

For Christmas I wish people with money would stop complaining about those with less.

Even those of us, especially those of us, who work hard yet still struggle to almost hold on to middle class, should stop complaining or worse yet blaming poor people for the problems of the world.

I wish we, all of us, would stop that. It isn’t Christ like. This is Christmas.

Those in poverty are not without their faults, nor are the middle or the rich. What the poor are without is comfort and power. Why would those of us with something, no matter how little, resent those with less? The idea that the poor are the source of modern American troubles is not only false, but in my mind, a morally indefensible idea. WE, the collective we, including the rich and the middle are all guilty of moral corruption and I am tired of the demonization of those who inhabit the bottom rung of society.

I can think of nothing crueler, nothing as polar opposite of charity and kindness, than to abuse (in any way) those who suffer in poverty. For Christmas I wish we as a nation would be more Christ-like.